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Studies in Philology 



A Quarterly Journal Published Under the 

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of the University of North 

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Volume XII Number 1 
January, 1915 









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*icm, fcr thp ki jcfite of hi» 

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Volume XII January, 1915 Number 1 

STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY 

A QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED UNDER THE 
DIRECTION OF THE 

Philological Club of the University of North Carolina 



Wine, Beere, Ale, and Tobacco 

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY INTERLUDE 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

By 
JAMES HOLLY HANFORD, Ph.D. 

{Associate Professor of English in the Universily 
of North Carolina) 



CHAPEL HILL 
PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 






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PREFACE 

The little interlude or debate here studied and reprinted has been passed over 
by students of the Elizabethan drama almost in silence. It has been thought of, 
apparently, as a mere dramatic oddity, filling no recognized niche in the structure 
of literary history. And yet the piece deserves to be remembered, if only as a 
curious specimen of the wit of other days. It has, moreover, a wealth of contem- 
porary allusion of a pecuUarly interesting kind, illustrating particularly the tavern 
manners of our ancestors and the lore and language of their drinking. The piece 
is full of the stock witticisms, the ephemeral turns of phrase which were the modern 
polite conversations of those days.' 

' And finally the dialogue is after all not quite sui generis, but possesses a hitherto 
unrecognized significance in its relation to the academic drama and especially 
to the minor entertainments in vogue at Cambridge University. Definite evidence 
that Wine, Beere and Ale was itself written for performance at Cambridge is lack- 
ing, though it is by no means improbable that such was the case. But its imme- 
diate literary connection with the little group of Cambridge plays among which 
I have placed it can hardly be questioned. 

This connection is clearer in the first edition of the piece than in the second. 
I have chosen, however, to reprint the latter because of the interest of the added 
material. The differences, which are considerable, between the first and second 
editions are clearly indicated in the footnotes. The third edition differs from the 
second chiefly in matters of spelUng and punctuation; variants of this sort, I have 
not thought it necessary to record. In a few cases where I have corrected obvious 
errors of t>'pography in the edition of 1630, the changes have been duly noted at 
the bottom of the page. In collating the third edition I have made use of a 
copy in the possession of Mr. Alfred C. Potter of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
who has very generously put his extensive collection of tobacco Hterature at my 
disposal. 

* For example, Toast's riddling description of Nutmeg: "round and sound and all of a colour"; 
Wine's excellent proverb: "At Dancing and at Foot-ball, all fellowes"; and Ale's "Gentlemen are 
you so simple to fight for the wall. Why the wall's my Landlords," a joke as threadbare in its day , 
no doubt, as any of the stale witticisms of society recorded by Dean Swift. 



INTRODUCTION 

I. Editions and Reprints 

"Wine, Beere, and Ale, Together by the Eares. A Dialogue, 
Written first in Dutch by Gallobelgicus, and faithfully translated out 
of the originall Copie, by Mercurius Brittanicus, for the benefite of his 
Nation. Horat. Siccis omnia nam dura Deus proposuit. London, 
Printed by A. M. for John Grove, and are to bee sold at his Shop, at 
Furnivals Inne Gate in Holborne. 1629." Such, in full, is the title 
page of the first edition of the dialogue reprinted in the following 
pages. The volume is extremely rare; indeed, I know of but a single 
copy, a small octavo in the British Museum, formerly in the possession 
of the Duke of Roxburghe.^ It has never, to my knowledge, been 
reprinted. 

A second edition, "much enlarged," appeg-red in 1630 with the 
title "Wine, Beere, Ale, and Tobacco Contending for Superiority," 
and it is upon this that the present text is based. The revision con- 
sisted in the addition of the sprightly role of Tobacco and in two con- 
siderable excisions from the earlier text. Of this second edition 
copies are to be found in the British Museum, in the Bodleian, and in 
private hands. It was reprinted substantially without change for the 
same bookseller in 1658, adorned with a wood cut representing a 
tavern scene. 

A reprint of the second edition was published in 1854 by J. O. 
Halliwell in his Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 
without collation of the first or third editions or other critical appara- 
tus.2 Halliwell's volume was of limited circulation and is now very 
rare. The dialogue may, therefore, fairly be called inaccessible to the 
modern reader.^ 

' The Roxburghe arms are stamped on the fly leaf, and the book is listed in the sale catalogue of 
the library of John, third duke, arranged by G. and W. Nichol, London, 1812. The passages in the 
text of the first edition which were omitted in the edition of 1630, are carefully indicated in this copy 
in ink, presumably for the direction of the printer in setting the second edition. It is clear from the 
typographical similarities of the two that the compositor had the printed text before him. 

' Halliwell makes no mention of the first edition. He remarks that he has heard of the existence 
of an earlier reprint but has been unable to find any trace of it. Possibly the edition of 1658 was the 
one referred to. 

' Wine, Beere, and Ale is entered as a ballad, in a list with others, to Francis Codes, Jan. 24, 1630. 
Stationers' Register, ed. Arber, IV, 236. This can hardly refer to the second edition of our dialogue, 
which bore a different title. The entry may record the transfer of publishers' rights in the first edition 
or, what is more likely, the publication or transfer of a ballad using the same material. 



Wine, Beere, 



II. Date and Authorship 



The ascription of Wine, Beere, and Ale, on the title page of the 
first edition, to Gallobelgicus and Mercurius Brittanicus conveys no 
trustworthy information regarding either its authorship or its soured. 
The names are obviously mere humorous adaptations of the pseu- 
donyms used by the publishers of two contemporary news books; 
Mercurius Brittanicus being the first English newspaper, started by 
Thomas Archer in 1625, and Mercurius Gallobelgicus, a Latin review 
of continental affairs, which had been issued at half yearly intervals 
from Cologne since 1594 and which circulated widely in England as 
well as abroad. That the play is no translation from the Dutch but 
an original product of English wit is clear enough from the text itself, 
with its abundance of purely English allusions and its incessant rattle 
of English puns.^ 

But while these names afford no clew to the authorship of the play, 
they are of some slight assistance in determining its date. The first 
number of Mercurius Brittanicus was issued February 23, 1624-25; 
the last extant number is dated February 8, 1625-26, but the periodical 
probably continued to run until the end of the year. The title page 
of Wine, Beere, and Ale must, therefore, have been composed not 
earlier than 1625, for, although the pseudonym Mercurius Brittanicus 
had been used as early as 1605 by Joseph Hall in his Mundus Alter et 
Idem, the association of the name in the present instance with Gallo- 
belgicus makes it apparent that Archer's corranto is here alluded to. 
Unfortunately, this establishes no date for the dialogue itself, since 
the title page may well have been written when the play was prepared 
for publication, in or before the year 1629. In the second edition the 
pseudonyms were dropped.^ 

A date not earlier than 1615 is established by the fact that Worke 
for Cutlers and Exchange Ware at Second Hand, which, as I have 

The character of Sugar as an attendant on Wine would have had no point outside of England. 
See note to line 5. John Taylor's Drinke and Welcome, which has some affinities with the present 
dialogue, likewise alleges the authority of a Dutch original. (London 1637 ; reprinted Ashbee, Occasion- 
al Facsimile Reprints, no. 17.) Dutch, in the latter instance at least, means German, and it is doubt- 
less the German fondness for the malt liquors that accounts in both cases for the ascription. Dr. Har- 
old De Wolf Fuller, who has been so kind as to look up the matter, informs me that he has been unable 
to find any evidence for a Dutch original of Wine, Beere, and Ale. 

^ See J. B. Williams, A Uitlory oj English Journaliim to the Founding oj the Gaiette. 1908, p. 26. 



Ale, and Tobacco ^ 7 

shown below ,^ served as models for Wine, Beere, and Ale. were pub- 
lished and probably acted in that year. 

Internal evidence would point to the years 1624-1626. There are 
clear allusions to the statute against drunkenness, first passed in 1603. 
This act was made perpetual in 1623-4 and enlarged shortly after the 
accession of Charles in 1625.^ The allusions may well have been 
prompted by one or the other of these confirmations of the law. 

A reference to the rise in the price of wines would also, apparently, 
fit this date.® According to the tables of Rogers, the price of claret 
and sack, after remaining fairly stationary for several years, rose from 
2s and 3s 4d in the preceding year to 2s 4d and 3s 8d the gallon in 
1621-2, went down again in 1623-4, and rose permanently in 1624-5. 
A still further increase in the price of sack and a marked advance for 
the sweet wines is recorded for 1627-29. 

Finally, the deliberate and uncalled for vilification of tobacco in 
the first edition^ suggests that the dialogue was probably composed 
while James I's well-known aversion to the herb was still in the 
ascendant. The prejudice of the reigning monarch had been similarly 
flattered by Daniel in The Queen's Arcadia^^ (1605) and by Jonson in 
the Masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies^^ (1621). The king is said 
to have been deeply interested in the tobacco disputations which took 
place at Oxford on the occasion of the same royal visit which saw the 
performance of Daniel's masque. If Wine, Beere, and Ale, in its 
earlier form, was prepared as an interlude for the entertainment of the 
king, whether at Cambridge^^ or elsewhere, the tobacco passage would 
be sufficiently explained. In the second edition the author or reviser 
appears to have no scruple about giving the tobacco devil his due. 
The intruder is, to be sure, violently disgusting to the other characters 

•Pp. 14 ff. 

' See note to lines 472 and 325. We may infer from the latter reference that the statute or its 
enforcement was of recent date. 

*See note to line 121. 

' See p. 25 ff. of text. Observe that Wine's defence of the weed is purely satirical: "Why, when a 
man hath not the wit wherewith to deliver his meaning in good words, this being taken dus presently 
help him to spit it out gentleman- like." Note ako that Sugar has the last word. 

" Works, ed. Grosart, vol. II, p. 253 (lines 1110 ff.). 

" Works, ed. Cunningham, vol. VII, p. 394. The verses about tobacco do not occur in the manu- 
script but are found in the earliest editions. 

^ Perhaps for his last visit, in 1625, as I have suggested below, p. 19. 



8 Wine, Beere, 

and his manners are unquestionably bad. But he speaks effectively 
in his own behalf and succeeds at length in winning recognition. In 
one passage in the second edition the reviser seems to be making fun 
of the late poet-prince and pretty clearly alludes to the passing away 
of the royal ban on smoking.^' 

III. History of the Material 

The general theme of the present dialogue — a contention between 
personified beverages — is a very old one in the literature of Europe. 
The tradition reaches back at least as far as the Goliardic poetry of 
the twelfth century. In the middle ages, however, the dispute usually 
involved a comparison not of related liquors, as here, but of the 
antagonistic and opposite beverages of wine and water. The contest 
between these two irreconcilable enemies was waged in a hundred 
forms in practically all the languages of western Europe, and it has 
continued in French and German popular tradition to the present 
day.^* An English nursery rhyme from Devonshire, adapted from a 
German folksong, is clearly the descendant of the mediaeval disputa- 
tion, but this, so far as I know, is the only appearance of the wine and 
water material on English soil, though, of course, English versions, 
particularly in ballad form, may have existed. 

Wine, Beere, and Ale bears little specific relation to the typical 
debate of wine and water; the arguments and motives which it has in 
common with the continental versions are only such as would be 
likely to develop independently, given the subject of a contention 
among drinks. Still, considering the fact that both Wine and Water 
appear as persons in the contention, it seems reasonable to count our 
play as belonging to the common European tradition. 

The existence of certain variations in the material which more or 
less closely approximate those of our debate makes this connection 
more apparent. There are, for example, a number of poems in which 
not Wine and Water but the different wines contend. And in one 
instance,^^ after the controversy of the wines, Water appears in order 

'' Lines 633 £f: "I am in fauour, and am growne to be the delight of poets and princes." etc. 
" See Hanford, "The Mediaeval Debate between Wine and Water" in Publications oj the Modern 
Language Association of America, XVIH, 3, (1913). 

^^ I.a Disputoison du Vin et de I'laue, Juhinal, Nouveaiirecueil, II, 293; Wright, Latin Poems attrib- 
uted to Waller Mapes. 299 ff. 



Ale, and Tobacco 9 

to plead his cause against them all. The matter is referred to 
Cupid as a connoisseur, who makes peace by declaring that each 
Wine has its particular use and virtue but that Water, as a 
common necessity, deserves to be held in highest honor. With 
this decision may be compared the verdict of Parson Water in the 
present dialogue, allowing to each of the liquors its " singular itie." 

In a few mediaeval debates Wine contends with other beverages. 
And finally there are two Latin pieces, representatives perhaps of a 
much older tradition,"^ in which Wine and Beer, the main antagonists 
in Wine, Beere, and Ale, though they do not contend in person, are 
contrasted much after the fashion of a debate. In the first of these, 
a Goliardic AUercatio vim et cervisiae^'' of the twelfth century, the 
writer, after bespeaking our attention to the iurgia of beer and wine, 
presents the causes of the two liquors in turn, closing with an emphatic 
pronouncement against the "daughter of straw" and in favor of the 
nobler liquor. The second Latin poem or pair of poems in which a 
comparison of wine and beer constitutes the theme is a Versus in 
commendatione vini attached to a Responsio ad quemdam contra cer- 
visiam,^^ both ascribed to Peter of Blois (died c. 1200). In the first 
the poet lauds wine by contrast with beer, describing in detail the 
effects of each; the Responsio is evidently a reply to some poem which 
turned the tables on Peter's Versus by praising beer at the expense of 
wine. The points made in the comparison are, naturally and inevi- 
tably, much the same as those in the AUercatio, described above, and 
in Wine, Beere, and Ale. 

Coming to English literature contemporary with our dialogue of 
Wine, Beere, and Ale, we shall find comparison of wine and the malt 

'" A Greek epigram by the Emperor Julian contrasts Celtic beer with wine. iWorks. Ed. Hertlein, 
p. 611). The former beverage is declared to have no title to the name of Bacchus. "Beer has the 
odt)r of a goat while wine has that of nectar. The Gauls made beer in default of grapes. It is the son 
of Ceres not of Dionysus." The traditional prejudice against beer appears again in the Latin epi- 
gram of Henri d' Avranches, quoted below, note to line 291, and in Henri d' Andeli's Batail'.e des Vins, 
where a priest excommunicates beer from the fellowship of the wines. 

"S'escomm.enia la cervoise 
Qui estoit fete dela Gise, 
En Flanders et en Engleterre. 
(Oeuvres de Henri d' Andeli, ed. Heron, p 29.) 

>' Reprinted by Bomer in Haupt's Zeilschrift, 49 (1907-8), 161. 
1' Migne, Patrologia Latina, 207, col. USS. 



10 Wine, Beere, 

liquors not uncommon. Thus in the ballad "Sack for my Money, "^^ 
of the time of James I, the rivalry of wine and beer is implied through- 
out. 

"We'l sing and laugh, and stoutly quaff. 
And quite renounce the Alehouse; 
For Ale and Beer are both now dear, 
The price is rais'd in either." 

The excellency of wine over ale and beer is also maintained by Henry 
Lawes in a later lyric,2o and by Thomas Randolph in Aristippus. 
Nor were the humbler liquors quite without their champions. John 
Taylor, the Water Poet, thus deplores the present neglect of their 
homelier virtues: 

"Bacchus is ador'd and deified 
And we HispaniaUzed and Frenchifide, 
Whil'st Noble Native Ale and Beere's hard fate 
Are like old Almanacks, quite out of date."-' 

And Joseph Beaumont makes ale speak in its own defense in his poem 
entitled "An Answer of Ale to the Challenge of Sack. "22 Water also 
enters into the controversy in Taylor's Drinke and Welcome, where it 
is exalted above ale, wine, and beer, though each of these liquors is 
elaborately praised each for its special excellence. Beer, because of 
its supposedly exotic character, suffers by contrast with ale at the 
hands of Randolph (if the piece be his) in a ballad entitled "The 
High and Mighty Commendation of a Pot of Good Ale."^^ 

"Beer is a stranger, a Dutch upstart, come, 
WTiose credit with us sometimes is but small; 
But in records of the Empire of Rome, 
The old Catholic drink is a pot of good ale." 

With the exception of Aristippus, which has a special relation to our 
dialogue and is to be considered later, none of these pieces is, strictly 
speaking, in debate form. They afford the material, however, and 

" Collier, Roxhurghe Ballads, 177; Roxburglie Ballads, ed. Ebsworth, VI, 319. 
-" Sandys, Festive Songs (Percy Society), xlii. Cf. also xliv. 
-' Quoted by Bickerdyke, Curiosities of Ale and Beer, p. 7. 
^^ Bickerdyke, p. 8. 
" Works, ed. Hazlitt, II, 662. 



Ale, and Tobacco 11 

show a tendency to personify the rival liquors. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that the question of the relative merits of the beverages 
should, under the influence of other debates, have flowered into a 
dramatized dispute.^^ 

The tobacco episode, added in the second edition, has behind it a 
fiercer and more novel controversy. Ever since the introduction of 
the herb into Europe its merits and demerits had been hotly canvassed 
by a hundred pens. Learned physicians wrote disquisitions on its 
medicinal value. Monarchs lost their dignity while inveighing 
against its vileness. The history of this quarrel is too extensive and 
too familiar to be recorded here.^^ There are, however, a number of 
individual tobacco documents which deserve special consideration 
because of their approximation in one way or another to the present 
debate. 

Tobacco not infrequently appears in seventeenth century litera- 
ture in propria persona. Thus in Lingua, Tobacco makes an elaborate 
speech in praise of his own virtues. The herb is constantly associated 
with alcoholic liquors in the literature of the time, as it was, of course, 
in life, and this association was emphasized by the common use of the 
term "drink" as applied to the taking of tobacco. Ale and tobacco 
are praised together in Ravenscroft's Brief Discourse of Music (1614). 
Barnabe Riche, in his Honestie of this Age, notes that drinking and 
smoking almost invariably go together, "for it is a commodity that is 
now as vendible in every taverne, inne and ale-house, as eyther wine, 
ale, or beare." 

It is natural enough, then, that tobacco, the "dry drink," should 
appear in literature as a rival of the standard beverages. A ballad in 
WiVs Recreation (1640), entitled "The Tryumph of Tobacco over Sack 

^ "A Dialogue between Claret and Darby Ale; A Poem considered in an accidental conversation 
between two gentlemen" was printed for E. Richardson in 1691. See Marchant, In Praise of Ate, 
London, 1888, p. 434, for a reprint. 

** See Arber, English Reprints, Works of James I, 81 ff: On the Introduction and Early Use of Tobacco 
In England. 



12 Wine, Beere, 

and Ale,"^^ may well be a recollection of the second form of our dia- 
logue. An earlier and closer approach to the material and form of 
our debate is to be found in the antimasque of the Masque of Flowers,'^'' 
performed at Gray's Inn, 1613-14. Here the liquors are represented 
by Silenus, who enters accompanied by a wine cooper, a vintner's 
boy, and a brewer; while the cause of tobacco is championed by 
Kawasha and his attendants— a skipper, a fencer, a pedler, and a 
barber. The two leaders jibe at each other and praise themselves in 
the usual debate manner. 

Silenus: Kawasha comes in Majestie, 
Was never such a God as he; 
He is come from a farre countrey 
To make our nose a chimney. 

Kawasha: The wine takes the contrary way, 
To get into the hood; 
But good tobacco makes no stay 
But seizeth where it should. 

As in Wine, Beere, Ale, and Tobacco, the contestants at length con- 
clude by making peace and joining in a dance. 

A thorough canvass of seventeenth-century tobacco literature 
might yield other precedents for our debate; but for the direct sug- 
gestion of the role of Tobacco in the second edition of Wine, Beere, 
and Ale, we need go no further than the edition of 1629, where the 
qualities of the weed are made the subject of a discussion between 
Wine and Sugar.^^ 

^"Nay, soft by your leaves, 
Tobacco bereaves 

You both of the garland: forbear it: 
You are two to one, 
Yet Tobacco alone 

Is like both to win it and wear it 



For all their bravado 
It is Trinidado. 

That both their noses will wipe 
Of the praises they desire. 
Unless they conspire 

To sing to the tune of his fife." 



" Reprinted Nichols, Progresses 0/ James I, II, 740-1 and H. A. Evans, English Masques, pp. 100 ff. 
^ See footnote on pp. 25 ff. of text. 



Ale, and Tobacco ^^ 

IV. Relation of Wine, Beere, and Ale to Certain Cambridge 

Entertainments 

Apart from its interest as an embodiment in English of the ancient 
strife of the liquors, Wine, Beere, and Ale possesses a hitherto unob- 
served significance, arising from its close connection with a little 
group of debate plays on similar subjects, all of which we know to 
have been written for performance at the University of Cambridge. 
This connection, which I have already barely indicated in a previous 
article, I wish now to consider in some detail. 

1. Lingua. The earliest of the Cambridge debate plays in ques- 
-ion is Lingua or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for 
Superiority, an elaborate drama composed by Thomas Tomkis of 
Trinity College, Cambridge, author of Albumazar,^^ and published in 
1607. The precise date of the original production of this piece is 
uncertain, but there can be no doubt that it was written for academic 
performance in the early years of the century, and it is probable that 
it was revived at a somewhat later date. 

There is a general resemblance in the theme and in the nature of 
the dramatis personae between this play and Wine, Beere, and Ale. 
Lingua, however, has an elaborate plot, while our piece is little more 
than a dialogue. The scene in Lingua is Microcosmus, the kingdom 
of man's mind and body. Lingua, who stands for the faculty of 
speech, stirs up a dissension among the five senses, by means of which 
she may prosecute her own claim to be enrolled among their number. 
To this end she allows them to find a robe and crown inscribed like 
Paris's apple of discord—" to the most worthy. " The senses at once 
fall to quarrelling and prepare to do battle, Visus and Auditus on the 
one side, Tactus and Gustus on the other, with Olfactus standing 
neutral but ready to join the victor. The case is at length submitted 
to the arbitration of Communis Sensus, who, after the senses have 
appeared before him in a pageant illustrating the joys that each can 
give, decides in favor of Visus but consoles the others by awarding 
them various privileges. Lingua, unlike Tobacco under somewhat 
similar circumstances, is refused admission to the ranks of the senses, 

» Tomkis's authorship, which had been conjectured by Fleay on the ground of similarity in style 
with Albumazar. is proved conclusively by the ascription of the play to Tomkis in a list of plays be- 
longing to Sir John Harrington, published by Fumivall in Notes and Queries, Ser. 7, IX, 382-3. 



Wine, Beere, 

except in the case of women, who shall hereafter be said to enjoy a 
sixth sense, that of speech. 

This decision offers a special point of resemblance with Wine, 
Beere, and Ale, for, just as Communis Sensus defines the particular 
place and use of each of the senses, so Parson Water assigns to each of 
the liquors its "singularity," as ale for the country, beer for the city 
wme for the court. Tobacco, an upstart intruder, demanding a 
place m the established triumvirate of drinks, plays, as I have sug- 
gested, a similar role to that of Lingua in her relation to the senses ^o 
It IS noteworthy, also, that Bacchus and Small Beer appear in the 
tram of Gustus, while Tobacco, as Olfactus's chief witness, extols his 
own virtues with as little modesty as his namesake in our play. 

2. Worke for Cutlers, or a Merry Dialogue betweene Sword, Rapier 
and Dagger, and Exchange Ware at Second Hand, or a Merry Dialogue 
betweene Band, Cufe, and Rufe?^ These companion pieces, published 
separately m 1615 and each bearing on its title page the words "acted 
m a shewe at the famous Universitie of Cambridge" afford a much 
more striking parallel to Wine, Beere, and Ale, appearing, indeed, to 
have served as the models for the later piece. Like Wine, Beere, and 
Ale they are properly debates-wit combats, wars of words, contain- 
mg only a semblance of action but making up for this deficiency by an 
unbelievable number of puns and "hits. " The following is a sample 
passage : 

''Sword. Nay Rapier, come forth, come forth, I say, He give thee a 
crown, though it be but a crackt one: what wilt not? Art so hard to 
be drawn forth. Rapier? 

Rapier S'foot thou shalt know that Rapier dares enter: nay Back- 
Sword. 

The striking similarity of these three debates in style and spirit 
suggests very forcibly the idea that they may all be the work of a 
single hand. Against this we have the probabUity that Worke for 
Cutlers ^nd Exchange Ware were written some ten years earlier than 
Wtne, Beere, and Ale. This, however, is not, on the evidence given 

d.' ^^i^:^^^^^ mtrV" t"'''"^ '"'^^' ^^""^ ^'°'^° ^--'^ ^--^- '^ ^'0^0 ' 



Ale, and Tobacco 15 

above, by any means certain; and if it were, it would not entirely 
disprove identity of authorship. 

But if the author of Wine, Beere, and Ale did not himself write the 
earlier dialogues he certainly imitated them closely. The correspond- 
ence which we have observed in style extends also to matters of 
structure. Taking our text as it stands in the first edition, the 
principal personages match the contestants of the other pieces with 
sufficient exactness. They are relatives and rivals among liquors just 
as Sword and Rapier, Band and Cuffe are relatives and rivals in arms 
and haberdashery. The quarrel for precedence is carried on in much 
the same way, beginning with angry words and leading up (as in the 
earlier debates) to a challenge. The issue of a duel is avoided in all 
three cases by the intervention of a mediator, some character akin to 
but not quite a rival of the contestants — in theone play Dagger, in 
another Band, in the third Water. These personages render parallel 
decisions in almost identical terms.'^' A song in each case follows the 
reconciliation of the rivals. 

It is evident, then, that these three debates were modelled on one 
and the same plan. But whereas Exchange Ware, and W^ork for 
Cutlers manifestly correspond at every point. Wine, Beere, and Ale 
shows an efi'ort to elaborate the material throughout. Thus to the 
principals, Wine, Beere, and Ale, are added their servants, Sugar, 
Tost, and Nutmeg, who enjoy a preliminary skirmish before the main 
dispute. These figures were doubtless suggested by the mention of 
Collar as Ruffe's "man" in Exchange Ware. A slight complication is 
secured in Wine, Beere, and Ale by making Sugar, like Lingua, the 
mischievous instigator of the broil. The number of principals is also 
increased from two to three. Wine and Beere begin the brawl and 
carry it on for some eighty lines in precisely the manner of the earlier 
debates. Ale, entering just after the challenge, appears at first to be 
about to play the pacific role of Band and Dagger, but being already 
warmed by the mischief-loving Sugar, he is easily drawn into the 

" "Well then, Ruff shall be the most accounted of among the clergy, for he is the graver fellow : 
although 1 know the Puritans will not greatly care for him; he hath such a deal of sitting, and they love 
standing better. As for you, Band, you shall be made the most of amongst the young gallants: al- 
though sometimes they shall use Ruff for a fashion, but not otherwise,*' etc. Exchange Ware. Cf. 
the decision of Water in the text, lines 373 ff., Dagger, in Worke for Cutlers, assigns Sword to the camp 
and Rapier to the court. 



16 Wine, Beere, 

controversy and the quarrel becomes triangular. The introduction 
of Water therefore becomes necessary to settle the dispute. The 
final song is followed by a dance in character. 

Thus far had the process of elaboration gone in the first form of 
the play. In the revision it was carried a step farther by the addition 
of the ludicrous figure of Tobacco with his swaggering manners and 
his tedious affectations. The idea, suggested perhaps by Lingua, of 
making this alien and upstart stimulant disrupt the newly established 
peace and force his way into the comradeship of his betters was an 
extremely happy and successful one ; and it was no doubt largely be- 
cause of this episode that the second version of our dialogue achieved 
popularity. 

3. Aristippus or the Jovial Philosopher. The Cambridge affilia- 
tions of Wine, Beere, and Ale are further strengthened by comparison 
with Thomas Randolph's Aristippus, the earliest of the farcical inter- 
ludes composed by Randolph for representation at Cambridge. Here 
the resemblance is not one of form but of subject matter. The enmity 
of the drinks, which is the theme of Wine, Beere, and Ale, is central 
also in Aristippus, though it is somewhat disguised by a more elaborate 
setting. Simphcissimus comes in his innocence to sit at the feet of 
the famous Aristippus. He finds the old philosopher's academy a 
tavern and the burden of his discourse the praise of wine. "If I had 
a thousand sons," said Falstaff, "the first humane principle I would 
teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict them- 
selves to sack." Aristippus is true to the letter and spirit of this 
creed. As a dramatic figure, indeed, he owes not a little to his jovial 
predecessor. A wild man, the untutored representative of beer and 
ale, enters to defend their cause against the philosopher's abuse, but 
the "malt heretic" is driven out and later comes to confess his error. 

Varied and original as are the elements in Randolph's composition, 
it is difficult to believe that he did not derive a suggestion from Wine, 
Beere, and Ale. Specific resemblances between the two dialogues are 
recorded in the notes to the present volume.^^ ^he most striking of 
these is the use by both Randolph and the author of our debate of a 
Latin epigram fromfan obscure mediaeval author.^'* How widely 

^ See notes to lines 118, 121, 291, 294, 378, 472, 479. 
** See note to line 381. 



Ale, and Tobacco 17 

these verses were current there is no means of knowing. They are 
quoted in Camden's Britannia and in DuCange's Glossarium but I 
have not met with them elsewhere. The translations of the lines in 
the two plays are different and apparently independent. The most 
reasonable assumption is that the quotation was familiar at this time 
among Cambridge students and was used in the one dialogue because 
it had been used in the other. Randolph was presumably the bor- 
rower, since Wine, Beere, and Ale, as we have seen, was manifestly 
modelled on an earlier pair of Cambridge interludes. It has occurred 
to me that Randolph might possibly be the author of both works — he 
is said to have been very active as an undergraduate in getting up 
student entertainments — but this conclusion seems on the whole 
unlikely. Wine, Beere, and Ale, though clever, is quite lacking in the 
verve and extravagance which characterize all of Randolph's un- 
doubted comedies. It is far more probable that he had either seen the 
piece performed in his early years at Cambridge (he matriculated 
July, 1624) or became acquainted with it immediately after its pub- 
lication. Aristippus was entered on the Stationers' Register March 
26, 1630. As the Cambridge session had been suspended since 
November owing to the plague, the play, if acted at the University, 
must have been written at least as early as 1629, the year in which 
Wine, Beere, and Ale was published in its earlier form. 

While there is no conclusive evidence to show that Wine, Beere, 
and Ale was written for performance at Cambridge University, such 
a supposition is, in view of what has already been said regarding its 
relation to dialogues known to have been of Cambridge origin, very 
probable. It is a fact that nothing so closely resembling this group — 
nothing so like the acted debate of John Heywood's time, — is to be 
found elsewhere in the Elizabethan or Stuart drama. Debate mater- 
ial and motives do, indeed, appear with some frequency, but these 
motives are usually incidental to the play as a whole. In masques, 
where the contention sometimes constitutes the framework of the 
piece, the subject is generally allegorical and didactic — the opposition 
of mythological persons, of virtues and vices, or of other personified 
abstractions. Perhaps the nearest akin in form and substance to the 
Cambridge group are the Oxford debate play, Bellum Grammaticale,^^ 

^ See Johannes Bolte, Andrea Guarnas Bellum Grammaticale und seine Nachahmungen, Monumenta 
Cermaniae Paedagogica, XLIII, where the Elizabethan play is reprinted. 



18 ' Wine, Beere, 

and the allegorical Pathomachia?^ The parts of speech are the inter- 
locutors in the one; virtues, vices, and the human affections in the 
other. But while these plays have an obvious kinship with Lingua?'' 
they differ from the other debates mentioned, including Wine, Beere, 
and Ale, in that they have more elaborate plots and depend to a 
slighter extent upon verbal wit. It is of importance in the present 
discussion to note that both Bellum Grammaticale and Pathomachia 
are university performances.^* Pathomachia may, indeed, be ascribed, 
with a high degree of probability, to Cambridge.^^ 

That entertainments of the debate type should have flourished 
chiefly in the universities is not surprising. The form afforded a most 
attractive opportunity for the exercise of wits already ground sharp 
by the regular academic disputations, which after all differed by no 
very wide interval from the fictitious debates. The idea of presenting 
in character, with a dash of action and a spice of humor, controversies 
akin to those which were every day being debated on the platform, 
gave added zest to these dramatic performances. It has ever been 
the delight of the young scholar to mimic his serious academic occupa- 
tions in play. In Bellum Grammaticale, Pathomachia, and Lingua 
there is promulgated in a semi-serious way an enormous amount of 
college lore. Worke for Cutlers, Exchange Ware, Wine, Beere, and 
Ale, and Aristippus, on the other hand, are purely humorous. Ran- 
dolph's work preserves a mock academic atmosphere throughout and 
the dialogue is littered with the flotsam and jetsam of erudition. 
Exchange Ware and Worke for Cutlers derive their material from mat- 
ters of fashion and social life, though each concludes with an academic 
allusion.^" Wine, Beere, and Ale stands in this respect between the 

^ Pathomachia, or the Bailie of the Affections shadowed by a feigned Siege of the City of Pathopolis, 
1630. Reprinted, Edinburgh, 1887 {Collectanea Adamantaea, XXII). 

^ See "The Debate Element," pp. 454-5, PalJtomachia appears to have been modelled in part on 
Lingua, which is alluded to in the text. 

'' For academic allusions in Pathomachia see I, iii and iv; II, ii: IV, iii etc. 

"fin addition to the connection with Lingua, pointed out in note 3 above, there is in Pathomachia 
an allusion to the well-known Cambridge play, Ignoramus, acted before James in 1615. Friendship 
says to Justice "If I get within your Cony-burrowes, I shall disgrace you like Ignoramus." The 
lawyer, Ignoramus, in the play of that name is hoodwinked and disgraced in various ways. Moore - 
Smith {Modern Language Review, III, 149) is of the opinion that it was written by Tomkis, author of 
Lingua. 

*° But this hee hopes, with you will suffize, 
To crave a pardon for a Scholars Prize. W. for C. 

Claw me, and I'll claw thee, — the proverb goes: 
Let it be true, in this that freshman shows. B., C, and R. 



Ale, and Tobacco 19 

other two. Ale's somewhat formal argument, with his citation of 
etymology, and his reference to his "Works" as evidence that he is 
possessed of the "liberal sciences," Water's scraps of Latin, and 
Wine's quotation from the poets, all combine to give the piece an 
academic flavor. The general atmosphere, however, as might have 
been expected from the subject matter, is rather that of the tavern 
than of the classroom. It might be argued that the one scene no less 
than the other would have to the academic audience the charm of the 
familiar. 

Against the hypothesis of Cambridge authorship we have the 
absence of any clear and definite local "hits" such as we might expect 
to find in a college play. But there is surprisingly little of this sort of 
thing in Lingua, and, save for the two references in the concluding 
songs, nothing in Workefor Cutlers or Exchange Ware. There are, on 
the other hand, in Wine, Beere, and Ale one or two allusions to London 
matters. Thus Tost (line 540) refers to the New River, a canal, 
dedicated in 1613, which brought water from some twenty miles 
north of London to a reservoir near Islington, to supply the city. 
And Water, speaking of the musicians, remarks that they are some 
friends of his who often "come upon the water. " It must be remem- 
bered, however, that London references would be perfectly familiar 
to a Cambridge audience. 

Assuming that Wine, Beere. and Ale is indeed of Cambridge origin, 
was it ever acted and, if so, under what conditions and by whom? 
Mr. G. C. Moore Smith^^ suggests that Exchange Ware and Workefor 
Cutlers, being alike so short, were played as interludes in the course of 
some longer plays performed before King James on his earlier visit to 
Cambridge in 1615. An imperfect copy of Exchange Ware exists in 
the manuscript collection of Dramatic Pieces on the Visits of James I 
to Cambridge. Wine, Beere, and Ale is but little longer and may have 
been similarly used.^^ We know that a comedy and other entertain- 
ments were prepared for the final visit of James to Cambridge in 1625 

*^ Notes on Some English University Plays, Modern Language Review, III, 152. 

*^ Nichols, Progresses oj James I, III. 66, gives the text of "A Cambridge Madrigal sung before the 
King instead of Interlude music in Ignoramus," showing that such substitutions were in use. G. C. 
Moore Smith notes that in the Ratio Siudiorum of the Jesuits there is mention, with tragedies and 
comedies, of interludes between the acts 



20 Wine, Beere, 

but never given, owing to the illness of the king. Some slight evi- 
dence that our play was designed for presentation before James is 
afforded by the earlier tobacco passage, which has little relation to the 
context but would, as I have already remarked, have been well cal- 
culated to please King James. 

Perhaps, on the other hand, the sketch appeared under less reput- 
able auspices. The less dignified sort of entertainment had not been 
in high favor with the academic authorities. " Common plays, public 
shews, interludes, comedies, and tragedies in the English tongue" 
were prohibited in the second year of James I by a royal letter. 
But the restriction would not appear to have been rigidly enforced. 
It takes more than a royal ordinance or college edict to prevent stu- 
dents from indulging in the surreptitious frolics to which they are 
attached. Unlicensed shows are said by Mullinger to have been 
frequently performed at neighboring inns. A student was suspended 
in 1600 for having ventured to take part in an interlude at the "Black 
Bear," where he appeared with "deformed long locks of unseemly 
sight, and great breeches, undecent for a graduate or scholar of ordi- 
nary carriage." Worke for Cutlers seems from the allusion in the 
closing line to have been performed by freshmen. Perhaps Wine, 
Beere, and Ale was also composed for the less seasoned scholars. 
Certainly there is nothing in the piece that would be above the acting 
powers of undergraduates. 

In any case the play was evidently designed for actual representa- 
tion.*^ Small touches throughout show that the writer had visualized 
the action and even the costume of his characters. This would seem 
to indicate that he had had some experience in waiting for the stage. 
If he had indeed been the author of Worke for Cutlers and its companion 
piece a few years before, the slightly greater complexity of the 
action and the superior adaptation to stage purposes in the later 
dialogue would be amply accounted for. 

^' Evidence on this point is to be found in the stage direction at the close of the play. In its 
earlier form this reads: "A Daunce, wherein the severall Natures of them all .is figured and represented." 
In the second edition the description was filled in, either by the author or by someone who was 
familiar with the stage representation. See lines 677 ff. 



VV I N E 

BEERE, ALE, 

TOBACCO. 

Contending forSuperiority. 




Ale, and Tobacco 21 



THE STATIONER TO THE READERS.^ 

Gentlemen; for in your Drinke, you will bee no lesse, I present 
you with this small Collation : If either Wine and Sugar, Beere and 
Nutmeg, a Cup of Ale and a Toste, Tobacco"^, or all together, may meete 
your Acceptation, I am glad I had it for you. There is difference 
betweene them; but your Palat may reconcile all. If any thing 
distaste you, there is Water to wash your hands of the whole Pamphlet. 
So hoping you will accept a Pledge of my Seruice, and haue a care of 
your owne health, I begin to you. /. Gr. 

THE SPEAKERS 

Wine, A Gentleman. 

SvGAR, His Page. 

Beere, A Citizen. 

NvTMEG, His Prentice. 

Ale, a Countrey-man. 

Tost, One of his rurall Seruants. 

Water, A Parson. 

Tobacco, A swaggering Gentleman.^ 

* Readers. Ed. 1629, Reader. 

' Tobacco. Omitted in Ed. 1629. 

' Tobacco, A Swaggering Gentleman. Omitted in Ed. 1629. 



Wine, Beere, Ale, and Tobacco 

Contending for Superiority.* 

Sugar and Nutmegge from seuerall doores meek. 

Sugar. Nutmegge? 

Nut. Sugar? well met, how chance you waite not \pon your 
Maister, where's Wine now? 

Sug. Oh sometimes without Sugar, all the while he's well if I bee 
in his company, tis but for fashion sake, I waite vpon him into a 
roome now and then, but am not regarded : marrie when hee is ill, hee 
makes much of mee, who but Sugar? but to my remembrance I haue 
not beene in his presence this fortnight, I hope shortly hee will not 
know me, though he meete me in his drinke. 10 

Nut. Thou hast a sweete life in the meane time Sugar. 

Sug. But thou art tied to more attendance Nutmegge vpon your 
Maister Beere. 

Nut. Faith no, I am free now and then, though I bee his Prentice 
still, Nutmegge hath more friends to trust to then Beere: I can be 
welcome to wine thy master sometimes, and to the honest Countrey 
man Ale too. But now I talke of Ale, when didst see his man prethee? 

Sug. Who, Tost? 

Nut. The same. 

Sug. I meete him at Tauerne euery day. 20 

Nut. When shall thou, and he, and I, meete and be merry ouer a 
Cuppe? 

Sug. He tell thee Nutmegge, I doe not care much for his company, 
he's such a chollericke peece, I know not what he's made of, but his 
quarrelling comes home to him, for hee's euery day cut for it, I maruell 
how he scapes, this morning he had a knife thrust into him 

Nut. Indeed he will be very hot sometimes. 

Sug. Hot? I, till he looke blacke ith' face agen, besides, if he take 
an opinion ther's no turning him, hee'l be burnt first. I did but by 

* Wine, Beere, etc. Ed. 1629, Wine, Beere, and Ale, Together by the Eares. 
1 Sugar and Nutmegge from severall doores meete. Omitted Ed. 1658. 

23 



24 Wine, Beere, 

chance let fall some words against Ale, and hee had like to haue beaten 
me to powder for it. 31 

Nut. How; beaten Sugar? that would be very fine ifaith; but hee 
being bread, and thou a loafe, you should not differ so. Stand, looke 
where he is. 

Enter Tost drunke. 

Sug. Then He be gone, for we shall quarrell. 
Nut. Come, feare not. He part you, but hee's drunke, ready to fall; 
whence comes he dropping in now? How now Tost? 

Tost. Nutmeg? round and sound and all of a colour, art thou there? 
Nut. Heere's all that's left of me. 40 

Tost. Nutmeg, I loue thee Nutmeg. What's that a Ghost? 
Nut. No, tis your old acquaintance Sugar. 
Tost. Sugar: He beat him to peeces. 
Sug. Hold, hold. Nutmegge. 

Nutmeg and Sugar hang vpon Tost. 

Tost. Cannot Tost stand without holding? 

Nut. Where haue you beene Tost? 

Tost. He tell thee, I haue bin with my M. Ale. Sirra, I was very 
drie, and he has made me drunke: doe I not crumble? I shall fall a 
pieces; but He beate Suger for all that: I doe not weigh him, hee is a 
poore Rogue, I haue knowne him solde for two pence, when hee was 
young, wrapt in swadling clouts of Paper. I know his breeding, a 
Drawer brought him vp, and now hee's growne so lumpish. 53 

Sug. Y'are a rude Tost. 

Tost. Rude? Let me but crush him: Rude? Sirra, tis well known 
you come from Barbary your selfe, and because of some few Pounds in 
a Chest, you thinke to domineere ouer Tost: y'are a little handsome, 
I confesse, & Wenches licke their lips after you; but for all that, 
would I might sinke to the bottome, if I doe not — : I will giue Sugar 
but one box. 60 

Nut. Come, come, you shall not. 

Sug. Prethee Nutmeg, take out Tost a little, to morrow weele 
meet and be drunke together. 

48 M. Ed. 1658, Master. 



Ale, and Tobacco 25 

Exit Nutmeg with Tost. 

So, so, I am glad hee's gone: I doe not loue this Tosts company, yet 
some occasion or other, puts me still vpon him. Ha, who's this? 

Enter Wine. 

Tis Wine my Master. 

Wine. Sugar, you are a sweet youth, you wayt well. 

Sug. A friend of mine call'd me forth, to cure a cut finger. 70 

Wine. Youle turne Surgeon or Physician shortly. 

Sug. But your diseases need none: for inflamations, which are 
dangerous to others, makes you more acceptable, nor doe you blush to 
haue it reported sir, how often you haue beene burnt. 

Wine. So sir, now you put me in minde on't, I heare say you 
runne a wenching, and keepe womens company too much. 

Sug. Alas sir, like will to like. Sugar being of his owne nature 
sweete, has reason to make much of women, which are the sweetest 
creatures. 

Wine. But some of them are sower enough. 80 

Sug. I sir, Widdowes at fifteene, and Maides at twentie fine; but I 
keepe them company, for no other thing, then to conuert them, some 
of them could eu'n eate me, but for feare of spoiling their teeth. 

Wifte. Indeed one of your sweet hearts complained t'other day you 
made her teeth rotten. 

Stig. Alas sir, twas none of my fault, she bit me first, and I could 
doe no lesse, then punish her sweet tooth. 

Wine. Well sirra, I say, take heed of women. 88 

Sug. Nay sir, if I may credit my owne experience they are the 
best friends I haue, for I am alwaies in their mouthes. If I come to a 
banquet, as none are made without mee, in what fashion soeuer I 
appeare, euery woman bestowes a handkercher vpon me, and striue to 
carry me away in their cleanest linnen: nay, but for shame, to betray 
their affections to mee, they would bring whole sheets for me to lie in. 

67 Enter Wine. Ed. 1629. Enter Wine, drinking Tobacco. 

68 Tis Wine my Master. Ed. 1629, Tis Wine my Master. What smoking? Wine and tobacco, 
I thinke, are never asunder: but tis no marvell they agree so well, they both come out of a Pipe 



26 



Wine, Beere, 



Wine. Why sure thou wert wrapt in thy mothers smocke. 

Sug. I thinke if the Midwife were put to her oath, I was wrapt in 
hers, oth Christing day. 
But see sir, here's Master Beere. 

Enter Beere. 

Wine. How, Beere? we are not very good friends, no matter, I 
scorne to auoid him. 101 

Beere. Beere-leaue sir. lustles Wine. 

Wine. So me thinkes? how now Beere, running atilt, dost not 
know me? 

Beere. I doe meane to haue the wall on you. 

Wine. The wall of me; you would haue your head and the wall 
knockt together, learne better manners, or I may chance to broach you. 

Beere. Broach me, alas poore Wine, tis not your Fieri facias can 
make Beere afraid, thy betters know the strength of Beere. I doe not 
feare your high colour sir. HO 

Sug. So, so, here will be some scuffling. 

Wine. You'le leaue your impudence, and learne to know your 
superiours Beere, or I may chance to haue you stopt vp. what neuer 
leaue working? I am none of your fellowes. 

Beere. I scorne thou shouldst. 

Wine. I am a companion for Princes, the least droppe of my 
blood, worth all thy body. I am sent for by the Citizens, visited by 
the Gallants, kist by the Gentlewomen: I am their life, their Genius, 

97 Oth Christening day. The following passage from Ed. 1629 is omitted at this point: 

Wine. Well sirra, enough of this discourse, you are for the woemen, but wee men haue a better 
companion, and indeed bitter, as thou art sweet, that's this Tobacco. 

Sug. I sir, but I could neuer arriue at the vnderstanding, why euery man should so affect it. 

Wine. There's thy ignorance, tis an excellent discourser, and a heipe for the imperfections of nature . 

Sug. As how, pray sir? 

Wine. Why. when a man hath not the wit to deliuer his meaning in good words, this bein" taken 
dus presently helpe help him to spit it out Gentleman-like. 

Sug. Indeed the best part of our common complement is but smoake, and now I know how Gen- 
tlemen come by it but me thinkes for all that, it takes from the honour of a Gentleman, to bee a com- 
mon piper and if the premises bee well considered, wee may conclude, they are no more men that vse 

Wine. How? not men? why? 

Sug. Because it makes em children againe, for I am sure they that vse it most, doe but sucke all 
the day long, and they are little better then children then. 

102 lustles. Misprinted instles. 

103 dost not know me? Ed. 1658, do'st thou not know me? 



Ale, and Tobacco 27 

the Poeticall furie, the Hehcon of the Muses, of better value then 
Beere; I should be sorry else. 120 

Beere. Thou art sorie wine indeed sometimes: Value? you are 
come vp of late, men pay deere for your company, and repent it: that 
giues you not the precedencie; though Beere set not so great a price 
vpon himselfe, he meanes not to bate a graine of his worth, nor sub- 
scribe to Wine for all his braueries, 

Wine. Not to mee? 

Beere. Not to you: why whence come you pray? 

Wine. From France, from Spaine, from Greece. 

Beere. Thou art a mad Greeke indeed. 

Wine. Where thou must neuer hope to come: who dares denie 
that I haue beene a trauailer? 131 

Beere. A trauailer? in a tumbrell, a little Beere will go farther: 
why Wine, art not thou kept vnder locke and key, confinde to some 
corner of a Cellar, and there indeed commonly close prisoner, vnlesse 
the laylor or Yeoman of the Bottles turne the Key for the chamber- 
maid now and then, for which shee vowes not to leaue him, till the 
last gaspe, where Beere goes abroad, and randeuous in euery place. 

Win. Thou in euery place? away hop of my thumbe: Beere, I am 
asham'd of thee. 139 

Beer, Be asham'd of thy selfe, and blush Wine thou art no better. 
Beere shall haue commendations for his mildnesse and vertue, when 
thou art spit out of mens mouthes, & distasted: thou art an hypocrite, 
Wine, art all white sometimes, but more changeable then Proteus: 
thou wouldst take vpon thee to comfort the blood, but hast beene the 
cause that too many noble veines haue beene emptied: thy vertue is 
to betray secrets, the very preparatiue to a thousand rapes and mur- 
ders, and yet thou darest stand x'pon thy credit, and preferre thy selfe 
to Beere, that is as cleare as day. 

Sug. Well said Beere, hee beares vp stifife like a Constable. Now 
will I play my part with'em both. Sir, To Wine 150 

This is intoUerable. 

Wine. The vessell of your wit leakes, Beere, why thou art drunke. 

Beere. So art thou Wine, euery day i'th weeke, and art faine to be 
carried foorth of doores. 

150 To. Misprinted Tn. 



28 



Wine, Beere, 



Sug. How sir? To Wine, 

Win. I scorne thy words, thou art base Beere: Wine is well borne, 
has good breeding, and bringing \^; thou deseruest to be carted, 
Beere. 

Sug. Sufifer this, and suffer all, to him againe. 159 

Beere. Carted? thou would be carted thy selfe, rackt and drawne 
for thy basenesse. Wine. Welborne? Did not euery man call you 
Bastard tother day? borne? ther's no man able to beare thee much: 
and for breeding, I know none thou hast, vnlesse it bee Diseases. 

Sug. How, diseases? you haue beene held alwayes to bee wholsome 
Wine, sir. 

Wine. Sirra, if I take you in hand, I shall make you smal Beere. 

Beere. Take heed I doe not make Vineger of you first. 

Sug. Doe, doe, make him pisse it, in my opinion sir, it were not for 
your honor to run away: yet Beere being a common quarreler, I feare 
may prooue too hard for you. 170 

Wine. Too hard for me? away Boy, He be as hard as he for his 
hart: alas, hee's but weake Beere, if I giue him but a tap, it shall stay 
him from runing out thus. 

Sug. So, so, they are high enough; fall too, and welcome. 

Enter Ale. 

Who's this? Ale? Oh for the three-men-Song: this Ale is a stout 
fellow, it shall go hard, but Sugar which makes all sweet sometimes, 
shall set him in his part of Discord. 

Wine. Come, come, Beere, you forget how low you were tother 
day: prouoke mee not too much, lest I bestow a firkin on you. 180 

Beere. Strike and thou dar'st Wine, I shall make thee answere as 
quicke as the obiection, and giue you a dash. 

Ale. Vmh: what's this? it seemes theres great difference betweene 
Wine and Beere. Sugar, what's the matter? 

Sug. Oh goodman Ale, I am glad you'r come, heare's nothing but 
contention: I haue gone betwLxt'em twice or thrice, but I feare, one or 
both will be spilt. 

Ale. What doe they contend about? 



Ale, and Tobacco 29 

Sug. For that, which for ought I can apprehend, belongs as much 
to you, as to either of them. 190 

Ale. Hah? to mee? what's that? 

Sug. Ale, by iudicious men hath been held no despicable drinke, 
for my owne part, tis nothing to me: you are all one to Sugar, who- 
soeuer be King, Sugar can be a subiect, but yet, twere fit, Ale had his 
measure. 

Ale. Are they so proud? 

Sug. They mind not you, as if you were too vnworthy a Competi- 
tor; See, tis come to a challenge. 

Wine tkrowes downe the gloue, which Beere takes vp. 

Pray take no knowledge that I discouered any thing of their Ambition; 
Sugar shall euer bee found true to Ale, else would I might neuer be 
more drunke in your company. 202 

Ale. No matter for protestation. 

Sug. So, so, now I haue warmed Ale pretty well. He leaue 'em: if 
Wine Beere and Ale agree together, would Sugar might neuer bee 
drunke but with Water, nor neuer helpe to preserue any thing but old 
women, & elder brothers. Exit. 

Wine. Remember the place, and weapon. 

Ale. Stay, stay, come together agen, why how now, what fight, and 
kill one another? 210 

Wine. Alas poore Beere, I account him dead already. 

Beere. No sir, you may find Beere quick enough, to pierce your 
Hogshead. I shall remember. 

Ale. But ith meane time you both forget your selues: dee heare? 
Ale is a friend to you both, let me know your difference. 

Beere. Hee has disgrac'd mee. 

Wine. Thou hast disgrac'd thy selfe in thy comparisons. Wine 
must be acknowledged the Nectar of all drinks, the prince of Liquors. 

Beere. To wash Bootes. 219 

Ale. Harke you, are you both mad? who hath heat you, that you 
run ouer, do you contend for that in iustice belongs to another? I 
tell you Wine and Beere, I do not rellish you. He tell you a tale: Two 



30 Wine, Beere, 

spruce hot-spurre fiery gallants meeting ith streets, iustled for the 
wall, drew, would ha been fighting: there steps mee forth a correcter 
of soles, an vnderlaid cobler, and cries out. Hold, hold your hands 
Gentlemen, are you so simple to fight for the wall? why the wall's my 
Landlords. Haue you but so much wit as to apply this, you shall 
neuer neede fence for the matter. Superioritie is mine, Ale is the 
prince of liquors, and you are both my subiects. 

Both. Wee thy Subiects? 230 

Wine. O base Ale. 

Beere. O muddy Ale. 

Ale. Leaue your railing, and attend my reasons, I claime your 
duties to mee, for many prerogatiues : my antiquitie, my riches, my 
learning, my strength, my grauitie. 

Wine. Antiquitie? your first reason's a very small one. 

Ale. Dare any of you denie my antiquitie? I say. 

Wine. We must beare with him, tis in his Ale. 

Ale. It onely pleades for mee: who hath not heard of the old Ale 
of England? 240 

Beere. Old Ale; oh there tisgrowne to a Prouerbe, Tones Ale's new. 

Ale. These are trifles^ and conuince me not. 

Wine. If wee should grant your argument, you would gaine little 
by't, goe together, I doe allow you both a couple of stale companions. 

Beere. Wine, you're very harsh. 

Ale. Let him, my second prerogatiue is my riches and possessions; 
for who knowes not how mar y howses I haue? Wine and Beere are 
faine to take vp a corner, your ambition goes no further then a Celler, 
where the whole house where I am is mine, goes onely by my name, is 
cald an Alehouse; but when is either heard, the Wine-house, or the 
Beere-house? you cannot passe a streete, wherein I haue not houses 
of mine owne, besides many that goe by other mens names. 252 

Beere. I confesse you haue here and there an Alehouse, but whose 
are all the rest? hath not Beere as much title to them? 

Wine. And yet I haue not heard that either of you both haue 
fin'd for Aldermen though I confesse something has bin attempted 
out of nicke and froth. Be rul'd by me, Beere and Ale, & aspire no 
heigher then the Common-Councell-houses. Oh impudence, that 
either of you should talke of houses, when sometimes you are both 



Ale, and Tobacco 31 

glad of a tub: dee heare Ale? doe not you knowe the man that did the 
bottle bring? 261 

Ale. Thou art glad of a Bottle thy selfe, Wine, sometimes, and so 
is Beere too, for all he froaths now. 

Beere. So, so. 

Ale. My third Prerogatiue, is my Learning. 

Wine. Learning? If you haue the Liberall Sciences, pray be free, 
and lets heare some. 

Ale. For that, though I could giue you demonstration, for breuities 
sake I remit you to my bookes. 

Beere. Bookes? printed Cum priuilegio no doubt on't, and sold for 
the Company of Stationers: what are the names? 271 

Ale. Admire me, but when I name learned, though not the great 
Alexander Ale and Tostatus the lesuite. 

Wine. O learned Ale, you scorne to make Indentures any more, 
but you might as well haue concluded this without booke. 

Beere. Why, you will shortly be Towne-Clerke, the Citie Chron- 
icler is too meane a place for you. 

Ale. Now for my strength and invincibilitie. 

Beere. But heere let mee interrupt you, talke no more of strength, 
none but Beere deserues to bee call'd strong, no pen is able to set 
downe my victories. I? why, I haue been the destruction. — 281 

Wine Of Troy, hast not? heere your owne mouthes condemne 
you: if killing be your conquest, euery Quacksaluing knaue may haue 
the credit of a rare Phisician, that sends more to the Church and 
Churchyard, then diseases doe: I Wine, comfort & preserue, let that 
be my Character. I am cosen German to the blood, not so like in my 
appearance as I am in nature, I repaire the debilities of age, and re- 
uiue the refrigerated spirits, exhilarate the heart, and Steele the brow 
with confidence. For you both the Poet hath drawne your memoriall 
in one. 290 

nil spissius ilia 

Duni bibitur, nil clarius est dum mingitur, vnde 
Constat quod multas Jceces in cor pore linquat. 
Nothing goes in so thicke. 
Nothing comes out so thinne: 
It must needs follow then, 
Your dregs are left within. 



32 Wine, Beere, 

And so I leaue you Stygiaemonstrum conforme paludi, monstrous 
drinke, like the riuer Styx. 299 

Ale. Nay but hearke, tis not your Latine must carry it away, I 
will not loose a drop of my reputation, and by your fauour, if you 
stand so much vpon your preseruing, He put you to your Latine agen, 
and prooue my selfe superiour, for Ale as if it were the life of mankind, 
hath a peculiar name and denomination, being cald Ale from Alo, 
which euery Schoole boy can tell, signifies to feed and norish, which 
neither Wine nor Beere can shew for themselues; and for my strength 
and honour in the warres, know that Ale is a Knight of Malta, and 
dares fight with any man beares a head, tis more safe to beleeue what 
a Souldier I am, then trie what I can doe. 309 

Beere. If you looke thus ilfauouredly Ale, you may fright men well 
enough, and be held terrible by weake stomacks; but if you call to 
mind the puissance and valour of Beere, invincible Beere, tumble 
downe Beere, you must sing a Pallinode. I? why I haue ouerthrowne 
armies, how easie is it for me to take a cittie, when I can tame Con- 
stables; which in their presence are formidable at midnight, in the 
middest of their rugged Bill men, make'em all resigne their weapons, 
and send 'em away to sleepe vpon their charge. 

Wine. How? vpon their owne charge? take the Constable com- 
mitting that fault, and hee'l neuer bee good in his office after it. 319 

Beere. Now for my vertue in preseruing and nourishing the body 
wherein you both so glory, you are not to compare with mee; since 
thousands euery day come to receiue their healths from me. 

Wine. Kings and Princes from me, and like them I am serued in 
plate. 

Ale. But thou art come downe of late to a glasse, Wine: and that's 
the reason I thinke, so many Vintners haue broake: now obserue my 
last Reason. 

Beere. Yes, pray where lies your grauitie? 328 

Ale. Not in my Beard, I speake without mentall reseruation, He 
tell you, and you shall confesse it: the Wise men of ancient time were 
called Sages, and to this day it signifies iudgment, discretion, grauitie; 
for by what other would you excite to good manners more aptly, then 
to shew a young man to bee sage, that is graue: and with what title 
can you better salute him that is graue, or more honour him, then to 



Ale, and Tobacco 33 

call him one of the Sages? Now this appellation neither of you can 
challenge, yet euery man giueth mee the attribute; for who knowes not 
I am called Sage Ale? 

Wi. One may guesse what braines he caries by the Sage now. 

Ale. And thus hauing giuen you sufhcient reasons for your acknowl- 
edgment of my principalitie, let your knees witnesse your obedience 
to your King, and I will grace you both by making you Squires of my 
body, right honorable Ale Squires. 342 

Wine. This is beyond suffering: was euer Wine so vndervalued? 
Barbarous detractors, whose beginning came from a dunghill, I defie 
you. Bacchus, looke downe, and see me vindicate thine honour, I 
scorne to procrastinate in this, and this minute you shall giue account 
of your insolencies: my spirit's high, I am enemy to both. 

Ale. Is Wine drawn? then haue at you, He make good Ale. 

Beere. I stand for the honour of Beere, were you an army. 

.4^ they ojfer to fight Water comes running in. 350 

Water. Hold, hold, hold. 

Wine. How now? what comes water running hither for? 

Wat. Let my feare ebbe a little. 

Beere. What tide brought you hither, Water? 

Water. The pure streame of my affection: oh how I am troubled! 
I am not yet recouered. 

Ale. So me thinks you looke very thin vpon't Water: but why doe 
we not fight? 358 

Water. Doe not talke of fighting, is it not time that Water should 
come to quench the fire of such contention? I tell you, the care of 
your preseruation made me breake my banks to come to you, that you 
might see the ouerflowing loue I beare you: your quarrell hath ecchoed 
vnto me; I know your ambition for superioritie : you are all my kins- 
men, neere allyed to Water, and though I say it, sometimes not a 
little beholding to Water, euen for your very makings. Will you 
referre your selues to mee, and wade no further in these discontent- 
ments? I will vndertake your reconcilement and qualification. 

Wine. To thee. Water? wilt thou take vpon thee to correct our 
irregularitie? Thou often goest beyond thy bounds thy selfe. But if 
they consent, I shall. 370 



34 Wine, Beere, 

Beere. I am content. 
Ale. And I. 

Water. Then without further circumlocution or insinuation, Water 
runnes to the matter: you shall no more contend for excellencie, for 
Water shall allow each of you a singularitie. First, you Wine, shall 
be in most request among Courtiers^ Gallants, Gentlemen, Poeticall 
wits, Qui nielioris luti homines, being of a refined mould, shall choose as 
a more nimble and actiue watering, to make their braines fruitfull, 
fecimdi calices quern non? but so as not confin'd to them, nor limitting 
them to you, more then to exhilarate their spirits, and acuate their 
inuentions. 381 

You Beere, shall bee in most grace with the Citizens, as being a 
more stayed Liquor, fit for them that purpose retirement and grauitie, 
that with the Snaile carries the cares of a house and family with them, 
tyed to the atendance of an illiberall profession, that neither trot nor 
amble, but haue a sure pace of their owne. Bos las sus fortius fi git pedem, 
The black Oxe has trod vpon their foot: yet I bound you not with the 
Citie, though it bee the common entertainement, you may bee in 
credit with Gentlemens Cellars, and carry reputation before you from 
March to Christmas-tide I should say; that Water should forget his 
Tide. ' 391 

You Ale I remit to the Countrie as more fit to liue where you were 
bred: your credit shall not be inferiour, for people of all sorts shall 
desire youre acquaintance, specially in the morning, though you may 
be allowed all the day after: the Parson shall account you one of his 
best Parishioners, & the Church wardens shall pay for your companie, 
and drawing their Bills all the yeere long, you shall bee loued and 
maintained at the Parish charge till you be old, bee allowed a Robin- 
hood, or Mother Red-cap, to hang at your doore, to beckon in Custom- 
ers: and if you come into the Citie, you may be drunke with pleasure, 
but neuer come into the fashion. At all times you shall haue respect, 
but ith Winter Morning without comparison. How doe you like my 
censure now? 403 

Ale. Water has a deepe iudgement. 

Wai. And yet the world sayes sometimes Water is shallow: nay, 
lie see you shake handes, and tie a new knot of friendship. 
Ale. We are henceforth brothers. 



Ale, and Tobacco -^c 

Wine. Stay, who's here? 
Enter Tost, Sugar, and Nutmeg: Tost whetting a knife on his shooe. 

Tost. I tell thee, Sugar, I am now friends with thee. But if it bee 
as you say ^^^ 

Wat. What's the matter? 

Ale. Let's obserue him a little, Tost is angry. 

Nut. What need you be so hote, Tost? 

Tost. Hote? tis no matter, Sugar: you will iustifie that Wine and 
Beere offered this wrong vnto Ale. 

Sug. I know not whose pride began; but I was sorry to see Wine, 
Beere, and Ale at such odds. 

Tost. Ods quotha? I do meane to be euen with some body. 

Nut. An euen Tost shewes well, ' 420 

Tost. They shall find that Ale has those about him that are not 
altogether dowe. 

Sug. Thou hast been baked. He sweare. 

Nut. And new come out of the Ouen too, I thinke: for he is very 
fierie. 

Tost. Ale must not be put downe so long as Tost has a crum of life 
left. Beere too? 

Nut. What doe you meane to doe with your knife. Tost? that will 
scarce cut Beere and 'twere buttered. 

Tost. Come not neere me, Nutmeg, least I grate you, and slise 
you: Nutmeg, doe you marke? 43I 

Wine. Let's in, and make 'em friends. How now Tost? 

Tost. Tis all one for that: Oh, are you there? pray tell me which 
of 'em ist? 

Ale. Is what? 

Nut. Why they are friends: what did you meane Sugar, to make 
Tost burne thus? 

Ale. No such matter. '■ 

Tost. You will not tell me then. Harke you Beere, March-Beere, 
this way a little. 44O 

Beere. What dost thou meane to doe with thy knife? 

Tost. I must stirre you a little Beere: what colour had you to 
quarrell with my Master? 



36 Wine, Beere, 

Beere. Ale. We are sworne brothers. 

Ale. We were at difference, and Wine too. but — 

Tost. Wine too But, but me no buts, I care not a strawe for his 
buts; dee here sir, doe you long to be Graues Wine? 

Wine. We are all friends. 

Water. I, I, all friends on my word, Tost. 

Tost. Fire and water are not to bee trusted, away new Riuer, away, 
I wash my hands on thee. 45 1 

Ale. Come hither againe, Tost. 

Tost. Ouer head and eares in Ale. 

Wine. How comes this about. Sugar? 

Sug. The truth is, sir, I told him of some difference betweene you, 
for he and I had been fallen out, and I had no other securitie to put in 
for my selfe, then to put him vpon some body else. 

Nut. Nutmeg durst scarce speake to him, hee was ready to put me 
in his pocket. 

Tost. I am coole agen: I may beleeue you are friends; then I am 
content to put vp. Puts vp his knife. 461 

Sugar and Nutmeg, come, we be three. 

Sug. Let's be all one rather: and from hencefoorth since they are 
so well accorded, let's make no difference of our Masters, but belong 
to 'em in common: for my part, though I wait vpon Wine, it shall not 
exempt my attendance on Beere, or Ale, if they please to command 
Sugar. 

Tost. A match. I am for any thing but Water. 

Nut. And I. 469 

Sug. But my seruice shall be ready for him to. Water and Sugar I 
hope, may be drunke together now and then, and not bee brought 
within compasse of the Statute, to bee put ith stockes for't, 

Wat. Godamercy Sugar with all my hart, I shall loue thy company, 
for I am solitary, and thou wilt make mee pleasant. Stay. 

Musicke. 

Harke Musicke? Oh some friends of mine, I know 'em, they often 
come vpon the water: let's entertaine the ayre a little, neuer a voice 
among you? 



Ale, and Tobacco 37 

The Song. 

Wine. / louiall Wine exhilarate the heart. 480 

Beere. March Beere is drinke for a King. 

Ale. But Ale, bonny Ale, with Spice and Tost, 

In the Morning's a daintie thing. 
„, j Then let vs be merry, wash sorrow away, 

I Wine, Beere, and Ale, shall be drunke today. 

Wine. / generous Wine, am for the Court. 

Beere. The Citie calls for Beere. 

Ale. But Ale, bonny Ale, like a Lord of the Soyle, 

In the Countrey shall domineer e. 
p, f Then let vs be merry, wash sorrow away, 490 

( Wine, Beere and Ale shall be drunke today. 

Water. Why, now could I dance for ioy. 

Ale. Now you talke of dancing, Wine, tis one of your qualities, 
let's pay the Musicians all together: wee haue often made other men 
haue light heads and heeles, there's no hurt a little in tripping for our 
selues, what say you? 

Beere. Strike vp Piper. 

Wine. Lustily, make a merry day on't; nay, leaue out none, at 
Dancing and at Foot-ball, all fellowes. 

Enter Tobaco. 500 

Tobaco. Be your leaue gentlemen wil't please you be here 

sir? 

Wine. Who's this Tobaco? 

Beere. Why comes he into our company? 

Tobaco. I do heare say there is a controuersie among you, 

and I am come to moderate the businesse. 

Ale. It shannot need, wee are concluded sir. 

Water. Your name is Tobaco I take it. 

Tobaco. No sir you take it not deesee, tis I that take it. 

Wine. But wee take it very ill, you should intrude your selfe into 
our mirth. 511 

498 Leaue. Misprinted leane. 

500-676 Enter Tobacco strike us dead. Omitted ed. 1629. 



38 Wine, Beere, 

Water. I did guesse, by the chimney your nose that you might 
stand in neede of water, to quench some fire in your kitchin. 

Tobaco. Hoh? Water. Spets. 

Water. He has spit me out already Exit. 

Tobaco. Sugar tost and nutmeg, puh. vanish. 

Wine. He has blone away the spice too. Ex. S. t. n. 

Tobaco, Now, doe you not know mee what do yee stand at 

gaze Tobacco is a drinke too. 

Beere. A drinke? 520 

Tobaco. Wine, you and I come both out of a pipe. 

Ale. Prethee go smoke somewhere else, we are not couetous of your 
acquaintance. 

Tobaco. Do not incense me, do not inflame Tobacco. 

Wine. We do not feare your puffing sir, and you haue any thing to 
say to vs be brief e and speake it. 

Tobaco. Then briefely and without more circumstance 

not to hold you in expectation. 

Wine. Heida, this is prolixity it selfe. 

Beere. Oh sir his words are not well dyed in his mouth. 530 

Ale. Or his vnderstanding is not sufficiently lighted yet giue him 
leaue I pray. 

Tobaco. I do come , 

Wine. Not yet to the purpose methinkes. 

Tost. And I do meane 

Beere. Somewhat wo'd heare out. 

Tobaco. And I entend 

Ale. Yet againe, thinke, thinke, till tomorrow, wee may chance 
meet agen. 

Tob. Stay, I command you stay. 540 

Wine. How, you command vs by whose autority? 

Beere. That must be disputed. 

Tob. Attend my argument; The soueraigne ought to comand, I 
am your soueraigne, the soueraigne drinke Tobaco. Ergo. 

514 Spets. Printed in roman type and without capitalization in eds. 1630 and 1658. 
517 Ex. S. t. n. Ed. 1658 Exit S. T. N. 
522 Not, Omitted ed. 1630. 
531 Giue. Misprinted gine. 



Ale, and Tobacco 39 

Wine I see Tobacco is sophisticated. 

Tob. I ought to command you, and it will become your duty to 
obey me 

Bee. You our soueraigne a meere whiffler. 

Tob. I say agen I am your Prince, bow, and doe homage. 

Al. You haue turnd ouer a new leafe Tobacco. 550 

Wine. You are very high Tobacco, I see ill weedes grow apace. 

Bee. Most high and mighty trinidado. 

Wine. For whose vertue would you be exalted, if it shall please 
your smoaky excellence? 

Tob. Not yours, — nor yours — nor yours — but altogether, all the 
vertues which you seuerally glory in, are in me vnited, — looke not so 
coy, Call water to spread your faction, and you are but like the 
giddy elements changing and borrowing creatures, whilst I Tobacco 
am acknowledged a Heauenly quintessence, a diuine herbe. 

Bee. Tobacco you are out. 560 

Al. After what rate is this an ounce? 

Wine Let vs beseech your excellence, for lesse title wee must not 
giue you hauing so much vertue as you pretend, to let vs vnderstand 
some of your particular graces and qualities. 

Bee. I pray discourse a litle, what's the first? 

Tob. You haue nam'd it tis discourse which you are so 

farre from being able to aduance that you destroy it, in all men when 
you are most accepted, when my diuine breath mixing with theirs, 
doth distill eloquence and oracle vpon the tongue, which moueth with 
such deliberation — words flowing in so sweet distinction, that many 
eares are chained to the lips of him that speaketh. 571 

Da puer accensum selecto fictile Paeto, 
vt Phcebum ore bibam. 

Ale. And yet wee are not inchanted with the musick of your pipe 
to dance after it. My most excellent discourser. 

Bee. And a helpe for the imperfections of nature. For when a 
man ha's not wit enough to expresse himselfe in words, you being 
taken, do presently helpe him, — to spit forth gentleman like. 

Al. Indeed the most part of our common complement is but 
smoke, and now I know how Gentlemen come by it. 580 

Tob. Thus swine do value pearle 



40 



Wine, Beere, 



Wine. But as you haue the eloquence of Vlysses, I suppose you 
haue not the strength of Aiax, wee should moue in great feare, if you 
were valiant, I hope you are but weake Tobacco. 

Tob. Weake? whose braine hath not felt the effects of my might- 
inesse? He that opposes me shall find me march like a tempest, 
waited vpon with lightening and black Cloudes. 

Wi. Here is no cracke. 

Bee. Yet he thunders it out. 589 

Ale. Yes yes, I remember I haue heard him reported a solidier, 
and once being in company with a knap-lack man a companion of his, 
I obtained a coppy of his military postures, which put downe the pike 
and pot-gun cleane, pray obserue 'em. 

13. Elbow your pipe. 

14. Mouth your pipe. 

15. Giue fire. 

16. Nose your Tobacco. 

17. Puffe vp your smoake. 

18. Spit on your right hand. 

19. Throw off your loose ashes. 660 

20. Present to your friend. 

21. As you were. 

22. Cleanse your pipe. 

23. Blow your pipe. 

24. Supply your pipe. 

Exercise this discipline till you stinke, defile the roome, offend 
your friends, destroy your liuer and lungs, and bid adiew to the world 
with a scowring fluxe. 

To. You haue a good memorie 

Ale. I'me sure Tobacco will spoyle it. 610 

Tob. These are but childish inuentions. 

Wine. They are most proper to illustrate your magnificence, for 
howsoeuer you pretend that you conuerse with men, it is apparant, , 
that you make men children agen, for they that vse you most familiar- 
ly, doe but smoake all the day long. 

To You dishonour me. 

598 Your. Misprinted You. 



1. 


Take your seale. 


2. 


Draw your box. 


3. 


Vncase your pipe. 


4. 


Produce your rammer. 


5. 


Blow your pipe. 


6. 


Open your box. 


7. 


Fill your pipe. 


8. 


Ramme your pipe. 


9. 


Withdraw your Rammer. 


10. 


Returne your rammer. 


11. 


Make ready. 


12. 


Present. 



Ale, and Tobacco 41 

Wine. Not so much as Gentlemen dishonour themselues, to turne 
common pipers: but if you haue any more conditions, pray enrich vs 
with the story. 

Tob. I am medicinall. 620 

Be. How? 
, To. And preserue the health of man. 

Wine. I hope they are not come to drinke healthes in Tobacco. 

To. I repaire the bodies which your immoderate cups haue turnd 
to fennes and marishes. The wisest Phisitians prescribe my vse, and 
acknowledge me a salutary herbe. 

Ale. Phisicians are no fooles, they may commend you for their 
profit, you are one of their herbingers to prouide for a disease; yet 
howsoeuer you call them wise, and glorie in their flatteries, they make 
but a very simple of you. 630 

Wine. Methinkes this should cut Tobacco. 

Tob. Not at all, I am aboue their poore derision; at my pleasure I 
could reuenge their malice, for I am in fauour, and growne to be the 
delight of poets and princes. 

Bee. How poets and princes? Ego b° Rex mens, a stopper for 
Tobacco, wee shall haue pretty treason anon else. 

Tob. Does it scruple your iudgement Mr. small beere that I say 
poets and Princes? I am not to learne their distinction, nor doth it 
take from any allegiance, they are both sacred names: yet I am con- 
fident it is easier for a poet not borne to soueraigntie to aspire to a 
kingdome, then for a King not borne with fancie to be made a poet. 
I mentioned these names, not in their methode and order, but to shew 
my grace with them, that are most able to punish insolence, such as 
your's, 644 

Ale. How the vapour rises. 

Wine. This ruffler may be troublesome, wee were best admit him 
to our society, he is a dry companion, and you may obserue, how he 
hath insinuated already with the greatest; the ladies begin to affect 
him, and he receiues priuate fauors from their lips, euery day he 
kisseth their hands, when he appeares in a faire pipe; though wee 
allow him not a prioritie, for our owne sakes, let vs hold correspond- 

636 pretty. Ed. of 1658, petty. 



42 Wine, Beere, 

ence with him, least he seduce men to forsake vs, or at least to make 
vse of vs but for their necessity. 653 

Ale. Hum! he sayes well, now I better consider 'twere safest to 
vse him kindly, least by degrees he ouerthrow vs, and iett vpon our 
priuiledges, for I heard a gentleman t'other day affirme, he had fasted 
3 or 4 dayes, only with Tobacco. 

Wine. Beside, if we continue friends he will be a preparatiue for 
our reception, without vs he may subsist, but with him wee are sure of 
liberall enter tainement. 660 

Beere. I am conuerted. Wine you are the best orator, speake for vs. 

Wiite. Tobacco, you are a good fellow, all ambition laid aside, let 
vs embrace as friends; excuse vs, that wee haue been a little merry 
with you, wee acknowledge you a gentle drink and you shall haue all 
the respect will become Wine, Beere, or Ale to obserue you with: 
what should we contend for primacie, quarrell about titles, which if to 
any wee acknowledge most properly belong to you, for they are all 
but smoake. Let vs vnite and be confederate states for the benefit of 
mens low countreyes. Hue and loue together. Wine doth here enter 
into league with Tobacco. 670 

Be. And beere. 

Al. And Ale. 

Tob. Are you in earnest? why then Tobacco is so farre from pride, 
that he vowes to serue you all, and when I leaue to be a true friend, 
may fire consume me, and my ashes want a buriall. 

W. B. A. and when wee falsifie, may thunders strike vs dead. 

The Dance. 

In which wine falling downe, one taketh sugar by the heeles and seemes 
to shake him vpon Wine. 

In the second passage, beere falleth, and 2 take Nutmegge, and as 
it were to grate him ouer beere. 681 

656 Gentleman. Misprinted geutleman. 
669 Mens. Misprinted meus. 

677 The Dance. Ed. 1629, A Daunce, wherein the several! Natures of them all is figured and 
represented. Ed. 1658 They Dance. 



Ale, and Tobacco 43 

In the Third Ale falleth, one bringeth in a Chafendish of coles, 
and another causeth Tost to put his breech to it; afterwards it is 
clapt to Ale's mouth, and the Dance concludeth, 

FINIS. 



44 Wine, Beere, 



NOTES 

Title Page. Siccis omnia. Horace, Odes, 1, xviii, 3. 

5. Oh sometimes without Sugar. The mixing of sugar with wine was apparently 
confined to England. FynesMoryson (Itinerary, ed. 1907, iv, 176) remarks that he 
has never observed sugar used for the purpose in any other country. "And be- 
cause the taste of the EngUsh is thus delighted with sweetnesse," Moryson con- 
tinues, "the Wines in Tavernes (for I speake not of Merchants or Gentlemens 
Cellars) are commonly mixed at the iiUing thereof, to make them pleasant." The 
practice of sugaring wine is often commented on with surprise by foreign travellers 
in England. (See Rye, England as seen by Foreigners, p. 190.) From the present 
passage it appears that sugar was at this time customarily used to disguise the 
taste of inferior or adulterated wines. Yet Falstaff, who protested against adul- 
terants ("There's lime in this sack, too!"), habitually drank sweetened wine. 

16. to the honest Coitntrey waw Ale too. Cf. Greene, Looking Glasse {or London 
and England, I, ii, 247-8 {Works, ed. CoUins, I): "for marke you, sir, a pot of Ale 
consists of four parts, Imprimus the Ale, the Toast, the Ginger, and the Notmeg." 

41. Whafs that a Ghost? The remark suggests the costume, half white and 
half pale-blue, of the character Sugar in Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird. 

51. / have knowne him solde for two pence. The price of sugar at this time 
ranged from Is 8d per pound for "fine" sugar to about Is for ordinary sugar. 
(See Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices, V, 472.) Later in the seventeenth 
century, with the importation of sugar from the new world, prices greatly decreased. 
The little paper of sugar sold in the taverns to the drinkers doubtless contained less 
than an ounce of the precious stuff, if we are to allow mine host a fair profit above 
the current price. 

56. you come from Barbary your selfe. The north and west coasts of Africa, 
with the adjacent islands, were an important source of sugar importation into 
England at this time, though the trade with the new world had already begun. 
(See Ellen D. Ellis, An Introduction to the History of Sugar as a Commodity, Bryn 
Mawr College Monographs.) Some sugar bought by Lord Spencer in 1605 at the 
high price of 2s the pound is designated in the records as " Barbary sugar." (Rog- 
ers, A History of Agriculture and Prices, V, 462.) 

76. / heare say you runne a wenching. The fondness of the EngHsh and es- 
pecially of EngHsh women for sweets of every kind was a source of wonder to 
foreigners. The Spaniards who came to England with the embassy of the Count 
Villamediana in 1603 won the favor of the fair ladies of Canterbury by presenting 
them through their lattices with sweetmeats, "which they enjoyed mightily; for (it 
is remarked) they eat nothing but what is sweetened with sugar." (Rye, England 
as seen by Foreigners, p. 190.) Cf. the allusion to eating sugar on toast (above, 
1. 66), and drinking it with water (above, line 470). The effect on the teeth of 
a too liberal indulgence of this taste is often alluded to. Thus the German, Paul 
Hentzner, describing the person of Queen Elizabeth, remarks the blackness of her 
teeth, "a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar." 
(Quoted by Rye, ib., 104.) 



Ale, and Tobacco 45 

91. None are made without me. "Banquet" in Elizabethan and Jacobean 
usage meant a course of sweets. 

97. / was wrapt in hers, oth Christian day. An amusing illustration of the 
use of sweets at christenings is afforded by Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 
III, ii {Works, ed. Bullen, IV, 152 fif.), where the gossips are regaled on comfits 
at Sir W. Whorehound's expense : 

"Allwit: These women have no consciences at sweet meats 
Where'ere they come, see and they've not culled out 
All the long plums too, they've left nothing here 
But short wiggle-tailed comfits, not worth mouthing: 
No mar'l I heard a citizen complain once 
That his wife's belly once broke his back." 

Cf. also Dekker's Bachelors' Banquet, cap. iii (quoted by Bullen, loc. cit.): "Con- 
sider then what cost and trouble it will be to have all things fine against the christen- 
ing day. What store of sugar, biscuits, comfits, and daraways, marmalade and 
marchpane, with all kinds of sweet suckets and superfluous banqueting stuff, 
with a hundred other odd and needless trifles, which at that time must fill the pock- 
ets of dainty dames." 

118. I am their life, their Genius, the Poeticall fire. Cf. Rsindolph, Aristippus: 
"But Sack is the life, soul, and spirits of a man, the fire which Prometheus stole, 
not from Jove's Kitchen, but from his Wine-celler, to increase the native heat and 

radical moisture, \vithout which we are but drowsie dust, or dead clay 

but in Poetry, it is the sole predominant quality, the sap and juice of a verse, 
yea the spring of the Muses is the fountain of Sack; for to think Helicon a Barrel 
of Beer, is as great a sin as to call Pegasus a Brewer's Horse." 

121. you are come up of late, Cf. Randolph, Aristippus "1st Scholar: Why, 
truly, his price has been raised of late, and his very name makes him dearer. 
2tui Scholar: A diligent lecturer deserves eight pence a pint tuition." 

Wine had advanced steadily in price since the middle ages, as may be seen 
in the successive edicts regulating its sale. Rogers (A History of Agricidtnre and 
Prices V, 476) gives the average prices for the three principal classes of wine- 
claret, sack, and muscadel-for the twenty years 1623-1642 at 2s 3d, 3s 7d, and 4s. 
The year 1621-2 saw a jump of 4d per gallon in the price of claret and sack. In 
1623-4 both kinds had gone down again to 2s 4d and 3s 8d respectively. Then in 
1624-5, they again rose to 2s 8d and 4s. It is probably this last advance which is 
specifically referred to in the text. In the years 1627-9 a marked rise took place 
in the prices of sack and muscadel (including malmsey, canary, and other sweet 
wines.) This would coincide with the allusions in Aristippus (Aristippus was a 
cant term for canary wine). Too much reliance must not be put upon the details 
of Roger's tables. The general rise in the price of wine through these years is, of 
course, estabhshed. 

128. From France, from Spaine, from Greece. This is a pretty accurate enum- 
eration of the chief sources of wine importation into England in the order of their 



46 Wine, Beere, 

importance. On Greek wines in England see Cyrus Redding, A History of Modern 
Wines, 25 and 290. Cf. Howell, Familiar Letters, II, liv: "In Greece there are no 
wines that have bodies enough to bear the sea for long voyages; some few muscadells 
and malmsies are brought over in small casks." For an account of the wines used 
in England in the sixteenth century see William Turner's A New Book of the Nature 
and Properties of Wines, 1568, extract giving Enumeration of English wines, in 
Arber, An English Garner II, 113. 

130. Who dares denie that I have beene a travailler. This argument and Beer's 
answer, "Art thou not kept under lock and key," appear in one form or another 
in many of the continental debates of Wine and Water. Cf. Deniidata Veritate 
(DuMeril, Poesies Inediles p. 305), where Water says to Wine 

Propter tuam pravitatem 
Nullam habes libertatem 

domos tenes parvulas: 
Ego magna sum in mundo; 
Dissoluta, me dlffundo 

Per terrae particulas. 

In the French Debat of the fifteenth century the argument is modified. Wine 
impUes that it is shut up as being the more precious liquor, while water is left at 
large because it is valueless. {Le debat du vin et de I'eau in Le debat de deux demoysel- 
les, p. 133.) 

"le suis garde en grans vesseaulx 

En queus, en muys et en tonneaulx; 

Tu cours partout comme folle." 

So also in the more popular French and German versions of the debate. 

138. Away hop of my thumbe. In Lingua, which is generally supposed to have 
been revived and acted at Cambridge between 1616 and 1620 {Modern Language 
Review, III, 146, and Retrospective Review, XII, 2>i), the part of Small Beer was 
taken by a diminutive boy. The character Beere in the present play is scornfully 
addressed as " Small Beere " above, 1. 637. 

146. the very preparative to a thousand rapes and murders. Cf. Demidata 
Veritate, (DuMeril, Poesies Inedites) : 

Et qui tuus est amator 
Homicida fornicator" etc. 

161 . Did not every man call you Bastard tother day. Bastard was a sweet Spanish 
wine, resembling muscadel in flavor; the word was sometimes applied to any 
sweetened wine. The New English Dictionary cites Surfl. and Markh. Country 

Farm. (1616) 642: "Bastards seeme to me to be so called, because 

they are oftentimes adulterated and falsified with honey." 

207. old women and elder brothers, i. e. to the disgust of their next heirs. 



Ale, and Tobacco 47 

219. To wash Bootes. Cf. Shakespeare, I Henry IV, II, i, 74: "Chamber- 
lain. What, the commonwealth their boots? will she hold out water in foul way? 
Gadshill. She will, she will; justice hath liquored her." 

235. an underlaid cobbler. Underlay = to mend the sole of a shoe. 

241. Jones Ale's new. A proverb. A ballad entitled "Jones (i.e. Joan's) 
ale is newe" is entered in the Stationers' Register, 16 October, 1594. Copies 
are preserved among the Douce Ballads in the Bodleian Library (T, fol. 99b and 
1, fol. 105b) See also Ebsworth's note in Ro.xburghe Ballads, VII, 164. 

256. fin' d for Alderman, i. e. paid composition as the price of escaping the 
duties of office, cf. Pepys's Diary for Dec. 1, 1663: "Mr. Crow hath lined for 
Alderman." 

257. Old of nicke and froth. "Nick" is the false bottom of a beer-can. The 
phrase "nick and froth" was applied to a means of cheating in ale houses. The 
contents of the tankard was diminished from the bottom by the nick and from the 
top by an undue amount of froth. Between the two the hapless drinker had 
indeed small beer. See New English Dictionary under "nick" for quotations. 

270. printed Cum privilegio. The allusion may derive special point from the 
perennial dispute between the Cambridge printers and the Stationers' Company of 
London. The controversy was particularly active during the first quarter of the 
seventeenth century. See Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, III, 138, 142, 161, etc. 
273. Alexander Ale. cf. Taylor, Drinke and Welcome (1637): "Some there 
are that affirme that Ale was first invented by Alexander the Great." 

285. / Wine, comfort and preserve. Cf. Dcniidata (DuMeril, Poesies Inedites, 
p. 307.) 

Per me senex juvenescit; 
Per te ruit et senescit 

Juvenum lascivia: 
Per me mundus reparatur etc. 

and Le debat du vin et de I'eau {Le debat de deux demoyselles, p. 133.) 

"Le cueur de I'homme tien ioyeulx, 
Je conforte les hommes vieux; 
Tu am^gris et ie tiens gras." 

Also Hans Sachs, Das slreit-gesprcch zwischen dem wasser und dem wein (Works. 
ed. A. von KeUer, IV, 252.) 

"Mein gegenwart die leut erfrewt. 
Ich mach schon roszlet das antlitz, 
Vertreib sorg, angst, triibsal und schmertzen, 
Sampt alien unmut ausz dem hertzen." 

291. nil spissius ilia. The epigram from which these lines are quoted is 
attributed by Camden {Britannia, 1600, p. 495) and DuCange {Glossarium under 
cerevisia) to Henricus Abrincensis (Henri d'Avranches), an obscure court poet 



48 Wine, Beere, 

of the time of Henry III of England. The verses, as given by Camden, are as 
follows : 

Nescio quod Stygiae monstrum conforme paludi, 
Cervisiam plerique vocant; nil spissius ilia, 
Dum bibitur; nil clarius est dum mingitur; unde 
Constat quod multas feces in ventre relinquit. 

A translation of these verses, apparently independent of that in the text, occurs' 
in Randolph's Aristippus (Works, ed. Hazlitt, I, 21), where the poem is ascribed 
to Ennius: "There is a drink made of the Stygian Lake," etc. For a remote 
parallel to these verses see the Epigram of the Emperor Juhan, cited above, p. 10. 
Cf. Victor Hehn, Kulturpjlanzen iind Hauslhicre in ihrem Uebergang aiis Asien. 
Berlin, 1887, 5th edition, p. 123. 

304. Ale from Alo. The derivation appears to have been a commonplace. 
Cf. Randolph, The High and Mighty Commendation of the Virtue of a Pot of Good 
Ale {Works, ed. Hazhtt, II, 666) : "O ale, ab alendo, thou liquor of life." 

315. But thou art come downe of late to a glasse, Wine. Rather because of the 
statute against drunkenness than because of the rise in price. 

363. you are all my kinsmen. Cf. Howell, Familiar Letters, II, xliv: "But 
we may say, that what beverage soever we make, either by brewing, by distillation, 
decoction, percolation, or pressing, it is but water at first: Nay, Wine itself is but 
Water sublim'd." 

375. Water shall allow each of you a singularitie. For the form of the derision 
and its resemblance to the judgment in Work for Cullers, etc., see Introduction, 
p. 15, note. Cf. Johnson's dictum: "Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; 
but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy." (Boswell's Life of Johnson, 
ed. HiU, III, 381). The apportionment of wine to the court, beer to the city, and 
ale to the country is in accordance with tradition and fact. Cf. Fynes Moryson, 
Itinerary, Ed. of 1907, IV, 176: "Clownes and vulgar men onely use large drinking 
of Beere or Ale, how much soever it is esteemed excellent drinke even among 
strangers; but Gentlemen garrawse onely in Wine." 

378. nimble and active watering, to make their braines fruitfull. Does the author 
have in mind Falstaff's famous panegyric on sack (II Henry IV, IV, iii, 92 ff)? "It 
ascends me into the brain; dries me there aU the foohsh and dull and crudy vapours 
which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and 
delectable shapes; which deliver'd o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, 

becomes excellent wit Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; 

for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, Uke lean, sterile, 

and bare land, manur'd, husbanded, and till'd " Cf. also Randolph's 

Aristippus, quoted above, note to line 118, where there is also a resemblance to 
Falstaff's soUloquy. 

379. Fecundi calices quem non. Horace, Epistles, I, v, 19: " Fecundi calicos 
quern nonfecere disertum." 



Ale, and Tobacco 49 

386. Bos lassus fortius jiglt pcdeni. Hieronym. Ep. 102 ad Augiistinum (Corp. 
Script. Eccles. vol. 55, p. 236), where the sentence is quoted as a proverb, warning 
the young man not to provoke the old to combat. 

390. from March to Christmas. The best beer was brewed in March. Cf. 
Harrison, A Description of England, 1577, Bk. Ill, cap. I. (Elizabethan England, 
ed. Lothrop Withington, p. 93): "The beer that is used at noblemen's tables, 
in their fixed and standing houses, is commonly of a year old, or peradventure of 
two years tunning or more; but this is not general. It is also brewed in March 
and therefore called March-beer; but for the household it is not usually under a 
month's age." Cf. also " March-Beere," below. The excellence of Enghsh beer 
is well attested. Cf. Rye, England as seen by Foreigners, pp. 9, 79, 109, and 190. 

Andrea Trevisano, writing in 1497, says that where both wine and beer were 
served the latter was often preferred (ib. xHv). 

395. the parson shall account you one of his best parishoncrs. The allusion 
is to the so-called church-ales, held for the purpose of raising parish funds. Ale 
was brewed for the occasion and sold to the parishioners. Cf. Stubbs, Anatomy of 
Abuses, 1595 (Ed. Furnivall, New Shakespeare Soc, Ser. VI, No. 6, p. 150): "In 
certaine Townes, where drunken Bachus beares all the sway against a Christmas, 
an Easter, Whitsonda}-, or some other time, the Church-wardens (for so they call 
them) of every parish, with the consent of the whole Parish, provide half a score 
or twentie quarters of mault, whereof some they buy of the Church-stock and some 
is given to them of the Parishioners themselves, everyone conferring somewhat, 
according to his abihtie; which mault being made into very strong ale or beere, 
is set to sale, either in the church, or some other place assigned to that purpose. 
Then, when the Nippitatum, this Huf-cap (as they call it) and this nectar of lyfe, 
is set abroche, wel is that he can get the soonest to it, and spends the moste at it, 

he is counted the godhest man of all the rest For they repaire their 

churches and chappels with it; they buy books for service, cuppes for the cele- 
bration of the Sacrament, surplesses for Sir Ihon, and such other necessaries." 

398. bee allowed a Robin-hood, or Mother Red-cap to hang at your doore. " Robin 
Hood" and "Mother Red Cap" are not uncommon as inn names in England today. 
There are or have been "Robin Hood" inns at Wisbach, Lithington, Gt. Cres- 
singham. Cherry Hinton, and Thetford in Cambridgeshire. Mother Red 
Cap signes are noted by Tarwood and Hotten (The History of Signboards) as 
occurring in upper HoUoway; Camden Town; Blackburn, Lancashire; etc. 
The authors quote Braithwaite, Whimsies of a New Cast of Characters (1631) : 
"He (the painter) bestows his pencils on an aged piece of decayed canvas, in a 
sooty alehouse where Mother Red-cap must be set out in her own colours." The 
name is common in folk lore. A Mother Redcap appears as the chief story teUing 
gossip of Drayton's Moon-Calf {Poems, ed. Chalmers, English Poets, IV, 130 fT.) : 

Amongst the rest at the World's labour, there. 
Four good old women most especial were. 
Who has been jolly wenches in their days, 
Through all the parish and had borne the praise 



50 Wine, Beere, 

For merry tales; one, Mother Redcap hight, 
And Mother Owlet, somewhat ill of sight, 
For she had burnt her eyes with watching late, 
Then Mother Bumby, a mad jocund mate 
As ever gossipp'd; and with her there came 
Old gammer Gurton. 

422. dowe, Dough. i 

429. that mil scarce cut Beere and 'twere buttered. "Buttered ale" was a familiar 
drink in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
447. Graves Wine. A pun on Vin de Graves. 

450. New River. An artificial waterway west of the Sea, terminating in a 
rcsen^oir on the outskirts of London. See B. Lambert, The History atul Survey of 
London and its Environs, H, 31. 

472. the statute. The reference is to "An Acte for repressinge the odious 
and loathsome synne of Drunckenness," first passed under James I, recited and 
enlarged at the opening of Charles II's reign (1625). See introduction, p. 7. 
The law provided a fine or imprisonment in the stocks for each offense. See 
Statutes of the Realme, I Car. I, c. iv. In much the spirit of this rather contemp- 
tuous allusion is the following passage from Randolph's Aristippus: " Simplicissi- 
mm: But (methinkes) there is one scrupulum: it seems to be actus illicitus that we 
should drink so much, it being lately forbidden, and therefore contra fortnatn 
statuti." 

479. The Song. It is worth noting that the meter of this piece is apparently 
inspired by that of the old drinking song, "Jolly Good Ale and Old": 
"I cannot eat but little meat," 
My belly is not good 
But sure I think that I can drink 
With him that wears a hood." 
Randolph's poem, "The High and Mighty Commendation of the Virtue of a Pot 
of Good Ale" (Works, ed. Hazlitt, II, 662), has obvious connections with the 
same song: 

"The hungry man seldom can mind his meat 
(Though his stomach could brook a tenpenny nail) ; 
He quite forgets hunger, thinks of it no longer. 
If his guts be but sous'd with a pot of good ale." 

512. the chimney your nose. Cf. the well-known anecdote of the serv^ant who, 
upon seeing smoke issue from the nostrils of his master, endeavored to quench 
the fire with a pot of ale. This story was told of Tarleton in 161 1 (See Shakespeare's 
Jest-Books, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1864, ii, 211); it was later attached to the name of 
Sir Walter Raleigh and has descended to posterity associated with him. (Cf. 
Arber, Works of James I, English Reprints, p. 88.) The nose of the tobacco smoker 
is not infrequently referred to as a chimney. Cf. Beaumont, Knight of the Burning 
Pestle, I, iii: "Wife. Fie, this stinking tobacco kills me! would there were none 
in England! — Now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco do 
you? nothing, I warrant you: make chimneys o' your faces!" 



Ale, and Tobacco 51 

519. Tobacco is a drinke too. The expression "to drink tobacco" was in common 
use. Henry Buttes, in his Diets Dry Dinner, 1599, calls tobacco a "dry drink." 

545. / see Tobacco is sophisticated. The adulteration of tobacco was in the 
seventeenth century and is today practiced for two purposes, to heighten the taste 
and to cheapen. For the first use of adulterants cf. Jonson, The Alchemist, I, 
iii, 21 ff., and Barclay, Nepenthes (1614): "They sophisticate and farde the same 
(i. e. poor, tasteless tobacco) in sundrie sortes, with black spice, galanga, aqua 
vitae, Spanish wine, anise" etc. For the second use of adulterants see Jonson, 
Bartholomew Fair, II, ii, 27 (Ed. Alden, Yale Studies in English, 35): "Three pence 
a pipe full, I will ha' made of all my whole halfe pound of tobacco, and a quarter 
of a pound of coltsfoot, mixt with it too, to itch it out." Gf. the pamphlet entitled 
The Perfuming of Tobacco and the Great Abuse committed in it (1611). 

555. all the vertues. Cf. Thorius, Hymnus Tabaci (ed. of 1628, p. 9) : 

" In primis non una subest natura stupendo 
In foho: adversis dives virtutibus omnem 
Exuperare fidem gaudet." 

559. a heavenly quintessence, a divine herbe. Cf. Sharpham, The Fleire (1600) 
(Ed. Hunold Nibbe, 1912, Hne 265): "the divine smoke of this Celestiall herbe." 
"Divine" was a traditional epithet for tobacco. Cf. Spenser, Faerie Queene, III, 
V, stanza 32: "Whether yt divine Tobacco were." Also Jonson, Every Man in his 
Humour, III, ii: "Therefore it cannot be but 'tis most divine." Again, The 
Metamorphosis of Tobacco (1602) (Reprinted by Collier, Illustrations of Early 
English Literature) : 

"There dids't thou gather in Parnassus clift 
This precious herbe, Tabacco most divine." 

According to Howell, Familiar Letters, III, vii, the Spaniards called Tobacco the 
"holy herb." 

567. You destroy it. Cf. the Wine and Water debates, in which this motive 
is recurrent. E. g. Denudata Veritate (DuMeril, Poesies inedites, pp. 304-5. 173): 

"Mensa pro te (i. e. Aqua) non ornatur; 
NuUus per te fabulatur 

In tui praesentia, 
Sed qui prius est jocundus, 
Ridens, verboque facundus, 

Non rumpit silentia. 



Tu (i. e. Vinum) scis linguas impedire 
Titubando solet ire 

Tua sumens basia; 
Verba recte non discernens. 
Centum putat esse, cernens 

Duo luminaria." 



52 Wine, Beere, 

572. Da puer accensiim. The quotation is from Hymnus T abaci by Raphael 
Thorius, a French physician resident during the first quarter of the seventeenth 
century in London. The poem was first pubhshed at Leyden in 1625, although it 
had been written as early as 1610. The first London edition was published in 
1627. The Unes are thus Englished in Peter Hausted's translation of 1651 : 

"Fill me a Pipe (boy) of that lusty smoke 
That I may drink the God into my brain." 

Pactum was one of the common designations of tobacco in the seventeenth cen- 
tury. It is said to have been the native term. A somewhat similar invocation to 
Tobacco is to be found in The Metamorphosis of Tobacco (1602), a piece which 
bears a considerable resemblance to Thorius's Hyvums. 

The last part of book II of the Hymnus is devoted to Tobacco's power of in- 
spiring eloquence and wit, and may have suggested the lines following the quo- 
tation in the text, which are repeated here from the tobacco passage in the first 
edition. But compare a similar passage in Sharpham's The Flcire, (1606), (Ed. 
Hunold Nibbe, 1912), 1. 264: "Sure Ladies I must needes say ih' instinct of this 
herb hath wrought in this Gentlemen such a divine influence of good words, excel- 
lent discourse, admirable invention, incomparable wit: why I tel yee, when he 
talkes, wisdom stands a mile off and dares not come neere him, for fear a should 
shame her: but before he did use this Tobacco, a was arrantst Woodcock that ever 
I saw." 

591. A kfiap-Jack man. A misprint for knap-sack man? 

592. A list of his military postures. A similar parody of the orders of drill is 
given by Addison, Spectator, 102, where a school in the art of handling the fan is 
described. "The Ladies who carry Fans under me arc drawn up twice a Day in 
my great Hall, where they are instructed in the Use of their Arms, and exercised 
in the following Words of Command, 

Handle your Fans, 
Unfurl your Fans, 
Discharge your Fans, 
Ground your Fans, 
Recover your Fans, 
Flutter your Fans." 

In the rest of the essay each of these commands is explained. Cf. Tatler 52 and 
Spectator 134 and 196. A hst of the actual "postures" in the exercise of the 
musket is given in Robert Harford's, English Military Discipline, 1680, p. 2: 

Shoulder j-our Musquet Blow off your loose Corns 

Lay your right hand on your Musquet Cast about to Charge 

Poise your Musquet Handle your Charger 

Rest your Musquet Open it with your Teeth 

Handle your Match Charge with Powder 

Guard your Pan Draw forth j-our Scowrer 

Blow your Match Shorten it to an inch against your right 

Open your Pan Breast 



Ale, and Tobacco 53 

Present Charge with Bullet 

Give Fire Ram down Powder and Ball 

Recover your Arms Withdraw your Scowrer 

Clean your Pan with your Thumb Shorten it to a Handful 

Handle your Primer Return your Scowrer 

Prime your Pan Poise your Musquet 

Shut your Pan with a full Hand Order your Musquet." 
Cf. also the "Exercise of the Pikes," ib., p. 4. 

610. I'me sure Tobacco will spoil it. The charge that tobacco weakens the 
memory is made and answered by Thorius, Hymnus, pp. 30-31. The tobacco 
drinker never fails to remember in what chest he laid his treasure, says the poet, 
nor where his mistress has her dwelling. Furthermore, if tobacco did weaken the 
memory learned men would not be so addicted to its use. 

625. The wisest physicians prescribe my use. The virtues of tobacco as a 
medicine were zealously advocated by some medical men and as hotly denied 
by others. An elaborate treatise on the medicinal uses of tobacco was published 
in 1626 by Johannes Neander of Bremen, entitled Tabacologla, hoc est Tabaci sen 
Nlcotlanae Descrlptlo Medlco-Chlrurglco-Pharniaceutlca, vet ejus Praeparatlo et 
Usus in omnibus ferme Corporis Humani Lncommodls." The chief uses of the 
herb are thus summarized in an epigram prefixed to this work : 

"OceUis 
Subvenit, et sanat plagas, et vulnera jungit. 
Discutit et strumas, cancrum, cancrosaque sanat 
Ulcera, et ambustis prodest, scabiemque repellit," etc. 

The following stanza from Barton HoHday's Marriage of the Arts as acted before 
King James at Woodstock in 1621, alludes to the most widely credited medicinal 
virtue of tobacco: 

"Tobacco's a Physician, 
Good for both sound and sickly; 
Tis a hot perfume. 
That expells cold rheume. 
And makes it flow down quickly." 

(Nichols, Progresses of James I, iii, 714.) 

648. the ladles begin to affect him. Women had long since begun to smoke. 
Signior Petoune in Sharpham's The Flelre (1615) tells a group of ladies that the divine 
herb will beautify their complexions if taken of a morning. Edmund Howe, 
in his continuation of Stowe's Annals, edition of 1631, p. 1038, remarks that in his 
day tobacco was "commonly used by most men and by many women." Cf. 
Dekker, Satlromastlx (1602): " 'Tis at your service gallants, and the tobacco 
too: 'tis right pudding, I can tell you; a lady or two took a pipe full at my hands, 
and praised it, fore the heavens." A portrait of 1650 shows a finely dressed lady 
gracefully smoking a clav pipe. (Fairholt, Tobacco, its History and Associations, 
p. 69.) 



54 Ale, and Tobacco 

657. he had fasted 3 or 4 dayes only with Tobacco. Cf. Jonson, Every Man in 
his Humour, III, ii: "I have been in the Indies (where this herbe grows) where 
neither myself, nor a dozen gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the 
taste of any other nutriment in the world for the space of one and twenty weeks, 
but tobacco only." Also Samuel Rowlands, Knave of Cliihbs (1611) : 

"Whenas my purse will not afford my stomach flesh or fish, 
I sup with smoke, and feed as well and fat as one could wish." 

And The Metamorphosis of Tobacco (1602) (Reprinted, Collier, Illustrations, p. 39) 



lb., p. 49. 



'AH goods, all pleasure it in one doth linke, 

'Tis phisieke, clothing, music, meate and drinke." 

"Here could I tell you how upon the seas 
Some men have fasted with it forty dales," etc. 



669. wine doth here enter into league with Tobacco. Wine is compared with 
tobacco in Book II of Thorius's Hymmis, pp. 30-31. At the close of the discussion 
the author says that the two should be inseparable : 

: •. "Sic operas praestant inter se, junctaque multo 

Nobilibus sapiunt, quam degustata seorsim." 



STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY 

Vol. I. Chaucer's Relative Constructions. By Louis Round 

Wilson. 
Vol. II, Studies in the Syntax of the King James Version. 

By James Moses Grainger. 
Vol. III. The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffman on the Tales of 

Edp-ar Allan Poe. By Palmer Cobb. 
Vol. IV. Gonjunction-f Participle Group in English. By 
Orestes P. Rhyne. 
The Dramatic Monologue. By Claud Howard. 
Vol. V. Imprecation as a Means of Emphasis in the Old 

French Chansons de Geste: By Oliver Towles. 
An- Example of Secondary Ablaut in the Modern 
English Weak Verb. By James Finch Royster, 
Hebbel's Julia a Forerunner of the Modern Drama, 
By Palmer Cobb. 
Vol. VI. A Middle English Treatise on the Ten Command- 
ments. Part I. — Text and Notes, Edited by 
James Finch Royster. 
Vol. VII, Nature Similes in Catullus. By George Howe. 

"onos Wnh av in Object Clauses. By Charles 
W. Bain. 
Vol. VIII, A Middle English Treatise on the Ten Command- 
ments. Part II. Introduction. Edited by James 
Finch Royster. 
Vol. IX. The French Inchoative Suffix -iss and the French 
-ir Conjugation in Middle English, By John 
Manning Booker. 
Vol, X, The Demonstrative pronoun in Sophocles. Part I. 

By Charles W. Bain. 
Recent Criticism of Latin Literature. By George 
Howe. . : 

Vol. XL The Shepheards Calender II. Edwin Greenlaw. 
The Celtic Origin of the Lay of Yonec, By Tom 

Peete Cross. 
A Note on Phormio. By George Howe. 
Authorship and Interpretation of the 'EK TH5 
M0Y5IKHS 'I2TOPIA5. By Wilbur High Roys- 



